The precipitation products (rain, snow and so on) of atmospheric water vapour are widely prevalent, and yet the map of its initial stage at a surface is still unclear. Here we investigate the condensation of water vapour occurring in both the hydrophobic-hydrophilic interface (graphene/mica) and the hydrophilic-hydrophilic interface (MoS 2 /mica) by in situ thermally controlled atomic force microscopy. By monitoring the dynamic dewetting/rewetting transitions process, the ice-like water adlayers, at the hydrophobic-hydrophilic interface and not at the hydrophilic-hydrophilic interface, stacked on top of each other up to three ice-I h layers (each of height 3.7 ± 0.2 Å), and the transition from layers to droplets was directly visualized experimentally. Compared with molecular dynamics simulation, the Stranski-Krastanov growth model is better suited to describe the whole water condensation process at the hydrophobic-hydrophilic interface. The initial stage of the hydrometeor is rationalized, which potentially can be utilized for understanding the boundary condition for water transport and the aqueous interfacial chemistry.

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