Sublimation
transition of a substance directly from the solid to the gas state
Sublimation is the transition of a substance directly from the solid to the gas state, without passing through the intermediate liquid state. The verb form of sublimation is sublime, or less preferably, sublimate. Sublimate also refers to the product obtained by sublimation. The point at which sublimation occurs rapidly (for further details, see below) is called critical sublimation point, or simply sublimation point. Notable examples include sublimation of dry ice at room temperature and atmospheric pressure, and that of solid iodine with heating.
The reverse process of sublimation is deposition (also called desublimation), in which a substance passes directly from a gas to a solid phase, without passing through the intermediate liquid state.
Technically, all solids may sublime, though most sublime at extremely low rates that are hardly detectable under usual conditions. At normal pressures, most chemical compounds and elements possess three different states at different temperatures. In these cases, the transition from the solid to the gas state requires an intermediate liquid state. The pressure referred to is the partial pressure of the substance, not the total (e.g.
“Sublimation” enters the record as transition of a substance directly from the solid to the gas state. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sublimation, transition and substance can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q131800. The Library of Congress control number is sh85129475. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sublimation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.