Vitrification

The transformation of a liquid into an amorphous glass by cooling or drying fast enough to avoid crystallization, locking molecules in place.

Glass transition temperature: The temperature range where an amorphous solid softens from rigid glass to viscous supercooled liquid without melting. Below Tg a vitrified system is preserved; above it, molecular motion resumes and damage follows.
Viscosity: A fluid's resistance to flow; in glass-forming liquids it rises steeply by many orders of magnitude on cooling. When viscosity reaches roughly ten to the thirteen poise, the liquid acts as a solid glass.
Cryopreservation: Preserving cells and tissues at low temperature by freezing or vitrification, halting metabolism indefinitely. Vitrification is freezing's sibling method, avoiding ice altogether.
Tardigrade cryptobiosis: The reversible suspended animation tardigrades enter when dried, surviving vacuum and near absolute zero. A late-detailed view of a glassy sugar matrix suspending an animal in dry glass.
Freezing: Crystallization of liquid water into ordered ice, expelling and concentrating solutes. The rival preservation route, whose ice crystals and solute damage vitrification avoids.
Nucleation: The formation of the first stable crystal seed from a disordered liquid or gas phase. Vitrification succeeds only when cooling outruns nucleation and crystal growth.
Fragile glass-former: A glass-forming liquid whose viscosity collapses sharply as temperature rises above the glass transition. Classifying liquids as fragile or strong predicts how readily they vitrify.
Oocyte vitrification: Rapid-cooling preservation of unfertilized egg cells in cryoprotectant, standard in fertility clinics since the 2000s. The technique where avoiding ice development reached confident clinical practice.
Resurrection plant: Plants such as Craterostigma that dry out completely yet resume growth when rewatered. Their survival depends on sugars vitrifying the dried cytoplasm.
Ice crystallization damage: Membrane rupture, dehydration and solute concentration caused by ice forming inside or around cells. Vitrification is defined as the strategy that escapes this damage.

Linked from 27 pages