Water and Ice Nucleation on Solid Surfaces

Nucleation, in which a new phase is spontaneously formed in an original phase, is normally regarded as the initial step for the phase transitions, for example, water condensation and icing. The ability to control nucleation is of significant importance for scientific research and many industrial applications, particularly for water and ice. Despite different properties in bulk configuration, the formation processes of nanoscopic water and ice nuclei have a lot in common. The study of nucleation can be traced back to the pioneering work of Fahrenheit in the 1700s, while the understanding of nucleation remains inadequate due to the difficulty in characterizing nucleation dynamics with conventional measurement tools. In this chapter, we present an overview of the most commonly used nucleation theory for analyzing the initial water condensation and ice crystallization, and the recent progress in the field of controlling heterogeneous nucleation on solid surfaces.