A study published in Nature Physics has shown that ordinary ice can generate electricity, providing new understanding of how lightning forms. Researchers found that ice displays strong flexoelectricity, an effect that occurs when the material is bent.
Anthony Mannino, a PhD student at Stony Brook University’s Department of Physics & Astronomy and Institute for Advanced Computational Science (IACS), led the theoretical component of the research. The experimental work was headed by Professor Gustau Catalan and Dr. Xin Wen from the Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (ICN2) in Barcelona.
Mannino used Stony Brook’s Seawulf supercomputing cluster to run quantum simulations, revealing that the surface of ice can show subtle ferroelectric ordering at low temperatures. This property amplifies flexoelectric effects and may explain how collisions between ice particles and graupel in thunderclouds create large charge separations, leading to lightning.
“Helping to facilitate an innovative discovery like the origin of lightning is exciting, extremely rewarding, and very much in keeping with the fundamental role of computation in contemporary science,” said Alan Calder, professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and deputy director of IACS. “As this study shows, with the combination of clever investigators and advanced computing the sky, or lightning shooting through it at least, is literally the limit.”
The work extends over a decade of research by Professor Marivi Fernandez-Serra’s group at Stony Brook University. Previous studies explored nuclear quantum effects in ice; this latest effort identifies a previously unknown electromechanical property.
Professor Fernandez-Serra commented on the collaboration: “We are very proud of this experiment–theory collaboration. When our colleagues in Barcelona approached us with their remarkable results in search of theoretical support, we were initially skeptical that we could simulate such a complex system. But Anthony showed that the observed phase transition can be reproduced by combining simulations with a simple physical model—providing a clear explanation for experiments in a material as notoriously difficult to model as ice.”
Mannino joined Stony Brook through the IACS Graduate Student Fellowship program, which provides an NSF-level stipend along with funding for research expenses such as publication fees and conference attendance.
The SeaWulf supercomputing cluster used for these simulations received funding from both National Science Foundation grants (#1531492 and #2215987) and New York State’s Empire State Development Division of Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR), with further support from Stony Brook University.
Stony Brook University is part of the State University of New York (SUNY) system. With more than 26,000 students and 3,000 faculty members, it has been recognized as one of America’s top public universities according to U.S. News & World Report (https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/stony-brook-university-2838). The university participates in co-managing Brookhaven National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy—a distinction shared by only eight universities nationwide—and was named anchor institution for The New York Climate Exchange on Governors Island in 2023 (https://www.stonybrook.edu/nyclimateexchange/).