Surface Tension in the Supercooled Water Region

Abstract

Water exhibits numerous anomalies. To explain the anomalies, various scenarios have been suggested. In accordance with the scenarios, progressive increase of surface tension with decreasing temperature is expected. But obvious experimental evidence of the second inflection point (SIP) anomaly was still missing. Recently, Hrubý et al. (J Phys Chem Lett, 11: 443, 2020) published a new experiment that provides room for further discussion about the existence of SIP in the supercooled water region. Our group used the capillary rise method and measured the surface tension of water down to − 32.27 °C. We will show in the paper that results of both experiments do not confirm the existence of SIP in the deeply supercooled water. But measurements for the very low temperatures show that it is not possible to recommend the extrapolated IAPWS formulation R1-76 (2014) below − 25 °C.