Molecular Model for Prenucleation Water Clusters

A molecular model applicable to prenucleation water clusters is described. As an illustration the model is applied to water clusters having clathrate-like structures composed of five-membered rings. This work was motivated by the apparent inadequacies of the corrected liquid drop model which (in addition to applying bulk properties to small clusters) predicts nucleation rates which may be as much as 1017 larger than experiment. We present the ``energy of formation'' at a temperature of 277°K for our molecular model for clusters ranging in size from 5 to 57 molecules. These results agree qualitatively with experiment and, we believe, provide a motivation for further development of the molecular approach.