Can thin disk-like ice clusters be more stable than compact droplet-like ice clusters?

Abstract The relative stability of water clusters of two different morphologies has been examined with the size N ranging from 54 to 864; the first one is a circular fragment of bilayer ice (a disk-like cluster), and the second one is a spherical fragment of normal cubic ice (a droplet-like cluster). We found a crossover at Nc≃1000, below which the disk-like cluster becomes more energetically favorable. The crossover arises because the potential energy (per molecule) for the droplet-like cluster decreases linearly with N−1/3 whereas it decreases by N−1/2 for the disk-like cluster.

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