Faceting during the transformation of amorphous to crystalline ice

We study the thermally activated transition from amorphous to crystalline ice (D2O) on Cu(111) with high-resolution scanning tunneling microscopy. Annealing of amorphous solid water up to the desorption temperature of 149 K results subsequently in monomer decorated double bilayers with different superstructure, a faceted surface, pyramidal islands, and nanocrystallites of distinct height at different coverages. Though all structures are truncations from crystalline water ice, for none of them is the ice bilayer found to be the terminating surface.