OIM’s and MB’s research contributions are part of the project No. 2022/47/P/ST3/01236 co-funded by the National Science Centre and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 945339. The research by MB took place at the "ENSEMBLE3 - Centre of Excellence for nanophotonics, advanced materials and novel crystal growth-based technologies" project (grant agreement No. MAB/2020/14) carried out within the International Research Agendas programme of the Foundation for Polish Science co-financed by the European Union under the European Regional Development Fund, the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme Teaming for Excellence (grant agreement. No. 857543) for support of this work. MB’s research contributions to this publication were created as part of the project of the Minister of Science and Higher Education "Support for the activities of Centers of Excellence established in Poland under the Horizon 2020 program" under contract No. MEiN/2023/DIR/3797. SK, BG, and CP’s contributions are part of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, project HIYIELD with grant agreement No. 101058694. SK, BG, and CP acknowledge also access to high-performance computing resources via NAISS, provided by NSC and PDC, as well as NOTUR, provided by Sigma2. V.E. acknowledges JDC2022-048530-I support funded by MICIU/AEI /10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR, and the University of Seville under the Grant Margarita Salas. MB gratefully acknowledges fruitful discussions with Dr Drew F. Parsons during the later stages of this work.

In this paper, we investigate the Casimir-Lifshitz free energy mechanism that governs both ice growth and melting near metal surfaces, with a particular focus on the role of oxidation. Our study reveals that metals such as gold, iron, and aluminum induce incomplete premelting, resulting in micron-sized liquid water layers when in contact with ice. These layers could have significant implications for the defrosting of metallic surfaces. When exposed to water vapor at the triple point, aluminum and other metals can induce the formation of notably thick layers of either liquid water or ice, which can theoretically become infinitely thick if other interactions are disregarded. However, when aluminum undergoes oxidation to form alumina, its behavior changes dramatically. Alumina surfaces cause complete melting when in direct contact with bulk ice and result in only micron-sized layers of water or ice in vapor conditions. In contrast, magnetite, the oxidized form of iron, retains metalliclike behavior due to its high dielectric constant, similar to other metals, and continues to support thick layers of water or ice. This distinction highlights the significant influence of oxidation on the dynamics of ice growth and melting near different metal surfaces.

Peer reviewed