The stickiness of micrometer-sized water-ice particles

Understand

Water ice is one of the most abundant materials in dense molecular clouds and in the outer reaches of protoplanetary disks.

• In contrast to other materials (e.g., silicates) water ice is assumed to be stickier due to its higher specific surface energy, leading to faster or more efficient growth in mutual collisions.
• However, experiments investigating the stickiness of water ice have been scarce, particularly in the astrophysically relevant micrometer-size region and at low temperatures.
• In this work, we present an experimental setup to grow aggregates composed of $\mathrm{\mu}$m-sized water-ice particles, which we used to measure the sticking and erosion thresholds of the ice particles at different temperatures between $114 \, \mathrm{K}$ and $260 \, \mathrm{K}$.