The breakdown of Stokes–Einstein relation in liquid water is one of the many anomalies that take place upon cooling and indicates the decoupling of diffusion and viscosity. It is hypothesized that these anomalies manifest due to the appearance of nanometer-scale spatial fluctuations, which become increasingly pronounced in the supercooled regime. Here, we explore the validity of the Stokes–Einstein relation in supercooled water using nanomolecular probes. We capture the diffusive dynamics of the probes using dynamic light scattering and target dynamics at different length scales by varying the probe size, from ≈100 nm silica spheres to molecular-sized polyhydroxylated fullerenes (≈1 nm). We find that all the studied probes, independent of size, display similar diffusive dynamics with an Arrhenius activation energy of ≈23 kJ mol⁻¹. Analysis of the diffusion coefficient further indicates that the probes, independent of their size, experience similar dynamic environment, which coincides with the macroscopic viscosity, while single water molecules effectively experience a comparatively lower viscosity. Finally, we conclude that our results indicate that the Stokes–Einstein relation is preserved for diffusion of probes in supercooled water T ≥ 260 K with size as small as ≈1 nm.

Here, we demonstrate an experimental proof of concept for nanofocused x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy, a technique sensitive to nanoscale fluctuations present in a broad range of systems. The experiment, performed at the NanoMAX beamline at MAX IV, uses a novel event-based x-ray detector to capture nanoparticle structural dynamics with microsecond resolution. By varying the nanobeam size from σ=88 nm to σ=2.5μm, we quantify the effect of the nanofocus on the small-angle scattering lineshape and on the diffusion coefficients obtained from nano-XPCS. We observe that the use of nanobeams leads to a multifold increase in speckle contrast, which greatly improves the experimental signal-to-noise ratio, quantified from the two-time intensity correlation functions. We conclude that it is possible to account for influence of the high beam divergence on the lineshape and measured dynamics by including a convolution with the nanobeam profile in the model.

It is proposed that a liquid-liquid transition (LLT), related to the hypothesized transition between high- and low-density liquids (HDL, LDL) in pure water, also exists in supercooled aqueous mixtures. However, experimental observations of the LLT in the supercooled solution is often complicated by the overlap with freezing. Here, we conducted an experiment probing the hypothesized LLT in deeply supercooled 16.5 mol% glycerol-water solution, combining X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS), ultra small-angle X-ray scattering (USAXS) and wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS). This approach allows us to capture simultaneous, discontinuous structural and dynamic changes within the supercooled liquid following quenching to cryogenic temperatures (172-182 K). We observe changes in the inter-atomic liquid structure (from WAXS) as well as in the nanoscale structure and dynamics (from USAXS/XPCS), resembling a first-order LLT between HDL-like to LDL-like liquid. Importantly, we find that the LLT precedes the onset of ice crystalliization, which we can distinguish based on the advent of ice bragg peaks in WAXS. In addition, analysis of the two-time correlation (TTC) function from XPCS enables us to follow the dynamics during the LLT, which indicates super-diffusive ballistic-like motion and a gradual slowdown towards an arrested state upon freezing, consistent with an LLT via spinodal decomposition. We conclude that these results indicate the existence of a first-order LLT in supercooled glycerol-water solutions at intermediate glycerol concentrations, similar to that hypothesized for pure water at elevated pressures.

The liquid-liquid critical point (LLCP) hypothesis of water suggests that water exists in two structurally distinct liquid states, high- and low-density liquid (HDL, LDL), with an LLCP hidden in the supercooled regime at elevated pressures. However, its consequences for solvation and structural dynamics in aqueous solutions remain to be explored. Here, we probe the structure and thermodynamics of deeply supercooled microdroplets of prototypical aqueous solutions of glycerol. The combination of rapid evaporative cooling with ultrafast small- and wide-angle X-ray scatter-ing (SAXS, WAXS) allows us to outrun crystallization and gain access to the largely unexplored deeply supercooled dilute regime (3.2 mol% glycerol) down to T ≈ 229 K, which is not accessible by conventional cooling methods. The experimental results, and complementary molecular dynamics(MD) simulations, indicate an increase in the tetrahedral coordination and enhancement of HDL-and LDL-like density fluctuations upon supercooling. In addition, the extended temperature range of the MD simulations reveals a maximum in the isothermal compressibility at T ≈ 220 K, indicating the location of a Widom line shifted to slightly lower temperatures compared to that of pure water. We conclude that the apparent effect of the presence of glycerol molecules on the water hydrogen-bond structure resembles that of pressure. This opens the possibility to search for the existence of an LLCP in these aqueous solutions simply by varying the solute concentration.