Communication: Thermodynamics of stacking disorder in ice nuclei

A simple Ising-like model for the stacking thermodynamics of ice 1 is constructed for nuclei in supercooled water, and combined with classical nucleation theory. For relative stabilities of cubic and hexagonal ice I within the range of experimental estimates, this predicts critical nuclei are stacking disordered at strong sub-cooling, consistent with recent experiments. At higher temperatures nucleation of pure hexagonal ice is recovered. Lattice-switching Monte-Carlo is applied to accurately compute the relative stability of cubic and hexagonal ice for the popular mW model of water. Results demonstrate that this model fails to adequately capture the relative energetics of the two poly-types, leading to stacking disorder at all temperatures. (C) 2014 Author(s).