Hexagonal ice transforms at high pressures and compression rates directly into "doubly metastable" ice phases.

We report compression and decompression experiments of hexagonal ice in a piston cylinder setup in the temperature range of 170-220 K up to pressures of 1.6 GPa. The main focus is on establishing the effect that an increase in compression rate up to 4000 MPa/min has on the phase changes incurred at high pressures. While at low compression rates, a phase change to stable ice II takes place (in agreement with earlier comprehensive studies), we find that at higher compression rates, increasing fractions and even pure ice III forms from hexagonal ice. We show that the critical compression rate, above which mainly the metastable ice III polymorph is produced, decreases by a factor of 30 when decreasing the temperature from 220 to 170 K. At the highest rate capable with our equipment, we even find formation of an ice V fraction in the mixture, which is metastable with respect to ice II and also metastable with respect to ice III. This indicates that at increasing compression rates, progressively more metastable phases of ice grow from hexagonal ice. Since ices II, III, and V differ very much in, e.g., strength and rheological properties, we have prepared solids of very different mechanical properties just by variation in compression rate. In addition, these metastable phases have stability regions in the phase diagrams only at much higher pressures and temperatures. Therefore, we anticipate that the method of isothermal compression at low temperatures and high compression rates is a tool for the academic and industrial polymorph search with great potential.