A Study of Heterogeneous Ice Nucleation Mechanisms Using a New Ice Thermal Diffusion Chamber.

This new method for precision control of thermodynamic environmental variables, supersaturation in particular, that surround freely suspended ice nuclei particles, and subsequent theoretical analysis of data, have resulted in some discoveries and clarified many long standing confusions concerning heterogeneous ice nucleation. The present study has been carried out with three main purposes first, to build and operate a new ice thermal diffusion chamber which is capable of precisely controlling a range of supersaturations under steady-state conditions at a given temperature for an ice nucleant smoke no substrate effect second, to experimentally identify the mechanisms of ice nucleation under the defined environmental conditions of the experiment, and the aerosol particles and, third, to develop a theory which could describe the obtained quantitative data.