Parity breaking at faceted crystal growth fronts during ice templating.

Abstract

Directional solidification of water-based solutions has emerged as a versatile technique to template hierarchical porous materials, but this nonequilibrium process remains incompletely understood. Here, we use phase-field simulations to shed light on the mechanism that selects the growth direction of the lamellar ice structure that templates those materials. Our results show that this selection can be understood within the general framework of spontaneous parity breaking, yielding quantitative predictions for the tilt angle of lamellae with respect to the thermal axis. The results provide a theoretical basis to interpret a wide range of experimental observations.