Fig. 4: Statistical analysis of heterogeneous ice nucleation data.

a Schematic illustration of the nucleation and crystallization pathways, including crowded nucleation and growth induced formation of in-plane and out-of-plane Ih/Ic heterostructures, along with independent nucleation and growth of hexagonal ice and cubic ice. b Instantaneous growth rates plotted against the size of 100 individual ice nuclei sampled across multiple time frames. c Plot of net growth possibility against the radius of 100 individual ice nuclei, revealing a consistent positive growth trend across all samples. Net growth possibility is defined as the difference in probability between an ice nucleus increasing and decreasing in size. Evolution of d nucleation number density and e nucleus size versus time. In both plots, each dashed colored line shows fitting for an individual measurement, while the average results are plotted using solid black lines. The shaded region indicates the 95% confidence interval.