Stable growth mechanisms of ice disk crystals in heavy water.

Ice crystal growth experiments in heavy water were carried out under microgravity to investigate the morphological transition from a disk crystal to a dendrite. Surprisingly, however, no transition was observed, namely, the disk crystal or dendrite maintained its shape throughout the experiments, unlike the results obtained on the ground. Therefore, we introduce a growth model to understand disk growth. The Gibbs-Thomson effect is taken into account as a stabilization mechanism. The model is numerically solved by varying both an interfacial tension of the prism plane and supercooling so that the final sizes of the crystals can become almost the same to determine the interfacial tension. The results are compared with the typical experimental ones and thus the interfacial tension is estimated to be 20 mJ/m(2). Next, the model is solved under two supercooling conditions by using the estimated interfacial tension to understand stable growth. Comparisons between the numerical and experimental results show that our model explains well the microgravity experiments. It is also found that the experimental setup has the capability of controlling temperature on the order of 1/100 K.