Greil, F. / Punampalam, R. / Walther, T.H. / Heißler, S. / Ulrich, A.S. (2023)

Journal of Molecular Liquids, 2023, 385, 122351

Abstract

A novel solid phase of water that is stable at room temperature has been reported to be accessible from hydrophilic surfaces by repeated perturbation of interfacial layers. These intriguing studies seemed to highlight the importance of exclusion zones at surfaces and coherence domains in bulk water, leading to far-reaching speculations regarding the formation of life. Extensive physico-chemical analyses suggested novel properties of such presumably enriched surface water and its lyophilized aggregate, a solid form named Xerosydryle. Here, we carried out a detailed biological and biochemical analysis of iteratively perturbed surface water prepared from NafionTM sheets. We demonstrate that the observed phenomena most likely do not originate from a novel solid phase of water, but instead from the accumulation of microbiological and organic contaminants. Likewise, a sample of the lyophilized solid material − that was presumed to represent stable water aggregates − was found to largely consist of a conglomerate of bacteria, algae and synthetic materials which had inadvertently accumulated during the long period of sample processing in open containers of up to several weeks.

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