Deforming ice with drops

A uniform solidification front undergoes non-trivial deformations when encountering an insoluble dispersed particle in a melt. For solid particles, the overall deformation characteristics are primarily dictated by heat transfer between the particle and the surroundings, remaining unaffected by the rate of approach of the solidification front. In this Letter, we show that, conversely, when interacting with a droplet or a bubble, the deformation behaviour exhibits entirely different and unexpected behaviour. It arises from an interfacial dynamics which is specific to particles with free interfaces, namely thermal Marangoni forces. Our study employs a combination of experiments, theory, and numerical simulations to investigate the interaction between the droplet and the freezing front and unveils its surprising behaviour. In particular, we quantitatively understand the dependence of the front deformation Δ on the front propagation velocity, which, for large front velocities, can even revert from attraction (Δ < 0) to repulsion (Δ > 0).