We have investigated structural and energetic characteristics of plastic ice, which was found in a high pressure region such as 10 GPa by molecular dynamics simulation and free energy calculation. It was predicted that plastic ice intervenes between ice VII and liquid water, in which diffusion is suppressed but rotation is allowed. In the present work, the structure in plastic ice is explored from both local and global view points and focus is placed on the local arrangement, the extent of deviation from the ideal lattice position, and the hydrogen-bonded patterns. The roles of the attractive interaction and the repulsive part of Lennard-Jones potential are also examined. It is found that the higher interaction energy in plastic ice induces a large dislocation of water molecules, which eventually conducts a facile rotation. There are a large amount of hydrogen-bonds which do not orient to the tetrahedral directions. These orientational defects give rise to fusion of the two interpenetrating sublattices of ice VII leading to a plastic phase rather than defect-containing ice VII, which results in a unique network structure of the plastic ice.

We present a method that brings prediction of phase behaviors of various clathrate hydrates with firm statistical mechanical ground adopting a different reference state from the usual one. Accommodation of a large guest molecule makes the frequencies of the lattice vibrational motions higher, which is one of the breakdowns of the assumptions in the original van der Waals and Platteeuw theory. The frequency modulations are incorporated in the free energy of cage occupation in the present method. Moreover, the reference state, which is originally the corresponding empty clathrate structure, is alternated to a state where cages of at least one sort are fully occupied. This meets the stability condition of clathrate hydrates that most of the cages should be accommodated. Owing to this new reference state, the thermodynamic stability is evaluated with reasonable accuracy from the free energy of cage occupation especially by a large guest molecule without considering its dependence on the cage occupancy. This conversion is also beneficial to establish a relation between the chemical potential of water and the cage occupancy from grandcanonical Monte Carlo simulation. We show a new method indeed works well in predicting the dissociation pressures of clathrate hydrates containing isobutane, propane, ethane, Xe, and CF4.

We have investigated structural and energetic characteristics of plastic ice, which was found in a high pressure region such as 10 GPa by molecular dynamics simulation and free energy calculation. It was predicted that plastic ice intervenes between ice VII and liquid water, in which diffusion is suppressed but rotation is allowed. In the present work, the structure in plastic ice is explored from both local and global view points and focus is placed on the local arrangement, the extent of deviation from the ideal lattice position, and the hydrogen-bonded patterns. The roles of the attractive interaction and the repulsive part of Lennard-Jones potential are also examined. It is found that the higher interaction energy in plastic ice induces a large dislocation of water molecules, which eventually conducts a facile rotation. There are a large amount of hydrogen-bonds which do not orient to the tetrahedral directions. These orientational defects give rise to fusion of the two interpenetrating sublattices of ice VII leading to a plastic phase rather than defect-containing ice VII, which results in a unique network structure of the plastic ice.