New paper on a new phase of ice: ice XIX

A paper on a project directed by Dr. Yamane, an alumnus of our group, is published on Nature Communications. In the paper, we reported the experimental evidence for the second hydrogen-ordered phase of ice. With the crystallographic evidence we reported here, a Roman numeral of "XIX" is now assigned to the new phase.

The presence of a new phase has been proposed since 2018, but no scientists have reported firm experimental results showing the existence of the phase before this work. Experiments using the in-situ dielectric measurement system developed by Dr. Yamane revealed that the phase transition boundary of ice VI when cooled has a bend as shown below. Furthermore, our neutron diffraction results firmly show that ice XIX has a different crystal structure from all other previously reported ice phases.

Yamane R., Komatsu K., Gouchi J., Uwatoko Y., Machida S., Hattori T., Ito H. and Kagi H. (2021) Experimental evidence for the existence of a second partially-ordered phase of ice VI, Nat. Commun., 12, 1129. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-21351-9