Effect of Surface Polarity on the Structure and Dynamics of Water in Nanoscale Confinement

Computation of Overhauser dynamic nuclear polarization processes reveals fundamental correlation between water dynamics, structure, and solvent restructuring entropy

Hydration water dynamics, structure, and thermodynamics are crucially important to understand and predict water-mediated properties at molecular interfaces. Yet experimentally and directly quantifying water behavior locally near interfaces at the sub-nanometer scale is challenging, especially at interfaces submerged in biological solutions. Overhauser dynamic nuclear polarization (ODNP) experiments measure equilibrium hydration water dynamics within 8-15 angstroms of a nitroxide spin probe on instantaneous timescales (10 picoseconds to nanoseconds), making ODNP a powerful tool for probing local water dynamics in the vicinity of the spin probe. As with other spectroscopic techniques, concurrent computational analysis is necessary to gain access to detailed molecular level information about the dynamic, structural, and thermodynamic properties of water from experimental ODNP data. We chose a model system that can systematically tune the dynamics of water, a water-glycerol mixture with compositions ranging from 0 to 0.3 mole fraction glycerol. We demonstrate the ability of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to compute ODNP spectroscopic quantities, and show that translational, rotational, and hydrogen bonding dynamics of hydration water align strongly with spectroscopic ODNP parameters. Moreover, MD simulations show tight correlations between the dynamic properties of water that ODNP captures and the structural and thermodynamic behavior of water. Hence, experimental ODNP readouts of varying water dynamics suggest changes in local structural and thermodynamic hydration water properties.

Electrolyte under Molybdenum Disulfide Surfaces: Molecular Insights on Structure and Dynamics of Water

Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) is a two-dimensional (2D) material that offers molecular transport and sieving properties and might be a potential candidate for membrane technologies for energy and environmental applications. To facilitate the separation application, understanding the structural and dynamic properties of water near the substrate-aqueous solution is essential. Employing the molecular dynamics simulation, we investigate the density, local water network at the solid-liquid interface, and water dynamics in aqueous electrolyte solutions with various chloride salts confined in MoS2 nanochannels with different pore sizes and electrolyte concentrations. Our simulation results confirm that the layering of interfacial water at the hydrophilic MoS2 surface and the water density variation depends on the nature of the ions. The simulation results imply a strong attraction of cations to the surface-liquid interfaces, whereas anions are expelled from the surface due to electrostatic interaction. An examination of the dynamical property of water reveals that the confinement effect is more pronounced on water mobility when the pore width is less than 3 nm, and the salt concentration is below 1 M, whereas the electrolyte concentration greater than 1 M, ions predominantly drive the water mobility as compared to confinement one. These simulation results enhance experimental observations and provide molecular insights into the local ordering mechanism that can be crucial in controlling water dynamics in nanofiltration applications.

Origin of the Hydrophobic Behaviour of Hydrophilic CeO2

The nature of the hydrophobicity found in rare-earth oxides is intriguing. The CeO2 (100) surface, despite its strongly hydrophilic nature, exhibits hydrophobic behaviour when immersed in water. In order to understand this puzzling and counter-intuitive effect we performed a detailed analysis of the confined water structure and dynamics. We report here an ab-initio molecular dynamics simulation (AIMD) study which demonstrates that the first adsorbed water layer, in immediate contact with the hydroxylated CeO2 surface, generates a hydrophobic interface with respect to the rest of the liquid water. The hydrophobicity is manifested in several ways: a considerable diffusion enhancement of the confined liquid water as compared with bulk water at the same thermodynamic condition, a weak adhesion energy and few H-bonds above the hydrophobic water layer, which may also sustain a water droplet. These findings introduce a new concept in water/rare-earth oxide interfaces: hydrophobicity mediated by specific water patterns on a hydrophilic surface.

Relationships between Molecular Structural Order Parameters and Equilibrium Water Dynamics in Aqueous Mixtures

Water's unique thermophysical properties and how it mediates aqueous interactions between solutes have long been interpreted in terms of its collective molecular structure. The seminal work of Errington and Debenedetti [Nature 2001, 409, 318-321] revealed a striking hierarchy of relationships among the thermodynamic, dynamic, and structural properties of water, motivating many efforts to understand (1) what measures of water structure are connected to different experimentally accessible macroscopic responses and (2) how many such structural metrics are adequate to describe the collective structural behavior of water. Diffusivity constitutes a particularly interesting experimentally accessible equilibrium property to investigate such relationships because advanced NMR techniques allow the measurement of bulk and local water dynamics in nanometer proximity to molecules and interfaces, suggesting the enticing possibility of measuring local diffusivities that report on water structure. Here, we apply statistical learning methods to discover persistent structure-dynamic correlations across a variety of simulated aqueous mixtures, from alcohol-water to polypeptoid-water systems. We investigate a variety of molecular water structure metrics and find that an unsupervised statistical learning algorithm (namely, sequential feature selection) identifies only two or three independent structural metrics that are sufficient to predict water self-diffusivity accurately. Surprisingly, the translational diffusivity of water across all mixed systems studied here is strongly correlated with a measure of tetrahedral order given by water's triplet angle distribution. We also identify a separate small number of structural metrics that well predict an important thermodynamic property, the excess chemical potential of an idealized methane-sized hydrophobe in water. Ultimately, we offer a Bayesian method of inferring water structure by using only structure-dynamics linear regression models with experimental Overhauser dynamic nuclear polarization (ODNP) measurements of water self-diffusivity. This study thus quantifies the relationships among several distinct structural order parameters in water and, through statistical learning, reveals the potential to leverage molecular structure to predict fundamental thermophysical properties. In turn, these findings suggest a framework for solving the inverse problem of inferring water's molecular structure using experimental measurements such as ODNP studies that probe local water properties.

Nanoconfined Fluids: Uniqueness of Water Compared to Other Liquids

Nanoconfinement can drastically change the behavior of liquids, puzzling us with counterintuitive properties. It is relevant in applications, including decontamination and crystallization control. However, it still lacks a systematic analysis for fluids with different bulk properties. Here we address this gap. We compare, by molecular dynamics simulations, three different liquids in a graphene slit pore: (1) A simple fluid, such as argon, described by a Lennard-Jones potential; (2) an anomalous fluid, such as a liquid metal, modeled with an isotropic core-softened potential; and (3) water, the prototypical anomalous liquid, with directional HBs. We study how the slit-pore width affects the structure, thermodynamics, and dynamics of the fluids. All the fluids show similar oscillating properties by changing the pore size. However, their free-energy minima are quite different in nature: (i) are energy-driven for the simple liquid; (ii) are entropy-driven for the isotropic core-softened potential; and (iii) have a changing nature for water. Indeed, for water, the monolayer minimum is entropy driven, at variance with the simple liquid, while the bilayer minimum is energy driven, at variance with the other anomalous liquid. Also, water has a large increase in diffusion for subnm slit pores, becoming faster than bulk. Instead, the other two fluids have diffusion oscillations much smaller than water, slowing down for decreasing slit-pore width. Our results, clarifying that water confined at the subnm scale behaves differently from other (simple or anomalous) fluids under similar confinement, are possibly relevant in nanopores applications, for example, in water purification from contaminants.

Structure and dynamics of water confined in cylindrical nanopores with varying hydrophobicity

We report a detailed study of the main structural and dynamical features of water confined in model Lennard-Jones nanopores with tunable hydrophobicity and finite length ([Formula: see text] Å). The generic model of cylindrical confinement used is able to reproduce the wetting features of a large class of technologically and biologically relevant systems spanning from crystalline nanoporous materials, to mesoporous silica and ion channels. The aim of this work is to discuss the influence of parameters such as wall hydrophobicity, temperature, and pore size on the structural and dynamical features of confined water. Our simulation campaign confirmed the existence of a core domain in which water displays bulk-like structural features even in extreme ([Formula: see text] Å) confinement, while dynamical properties were shown to depend non-trivially on the size and hydrophobicity of the pores. This article is part of the theme issue 'Progress in mesoscale methods for fluid dynamics simulation'.

Water on hydroxylated silica surfaces: Work of adhesion, interfacial entropy, and droplet wetting

In the last few years, much attention has been devoted to the control of the wettability properties of surfaces modified with functional groups. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation is one of the powerful tools for microscopic analysis providing visual images and mean geometrical shapes of the contact line, e.g., of nanoscale droplets on solid surfaces, while profound understanding of wetting demands quantitative evaluation of the solid-liquid (SL) interfacial tension. In the present work, we examined the wetting of water on neutral and regular hydroxylated silica surfaces with five different area densities of OH groups ρ_A ^OH, ranging from a non-hydroxylated surface to a fully hydroxylated one through two theoretical methods: thermodynamic integration (TI) and MD simulations of quasi-two-dimensional equilibrium droplets. For the former, the work of adhesion needed to quasi-statically strip the water film off the solid surface was computed by the phantom wall TI scheme to evaluate the SL interfacial free energy, whereas for the latter, the apparent contact angle θ_app was calculated from the droplet density distribution. The theoretical contact angle θ_YD and the apparent one θ_app, both indicating the enhancement of wettability by an increase in ρ_A ^OH, presented good quantitative agreement, especially for non-hydroxylated and highly hydroxylated surfaces. On partially hydroxylated surfaces, in which θ_YD and θ_app slightly deviated, the Brownian motion of the droplet was suppressed, possibly due to the pinning of the contact line around the hydroxyl groups. Relations between work of adhesion, interfacial energy, and entropy loss were also analyzed, and their influence on the wettability was discussed.

Hydration structure of flat and stepped MgO surfaces

We investigate the solvation structure of flat and stepped MgO(001) in neutral liquid water using ab initio molecular dynamics based on a hybrid density functional with dispersion corrections. Our simulations show that the MgO surface is covered by a densely packed layer of mixed intact and dissociated adsorbed water molecules in a planar arrangement with strong intermolecular H-bonds. The water dissociation fractions in this layer are >20% and >30% on the flat and stepped surfaces, respectively. Slightly above the first water layer, we observe metastable OH groups perpendicular to the interface, similar to those reported in low temperature studies of water monolayers on MgO. These species receive hydrogen bonds from four nearby water molecules in the first layer and have their hydrophobic H end directed toward bulk water, while their associated protons are bound to surface oxygens. The formation of these OH species is attributed to the strong basicity of the MgO surface and can be relevant for understanding various phenomena from morphology evolution and growth of (nano)crystalline MgO particles to heterogeneous catalysis.

Supercooled liquid-like dynamics in water near a fully hydrated titania surface: Decoupling of rotational and translational diffusion

We report an ab initio molecular dynamics (MD) simulation investigating the effect of a fully hydrated surface of TiO₂ on the water dynamics. It is found that the universal relation between the rotational and translational diffusion characteristics of bulk water is broken in the water layers near the surface with the rotational diffusion demonstrating progressive retardation relative to the translational diffusion when approaching the surface. This kind of rotation-translation decoupling has so far only been observed in the supercooled liquids approaching glass transition, and its observation in water at a normal liquid temperature is of conceptual interest. This finding is also of interest for the application-significant studies of the water interaction with fully hydrated nanoparticles. We note that this is the first observation of rotation-translation decoupling in an ab initio MD simulation of water.

The role of solute polarity on methanol-silica interfacial solvation: a molecular dynamics study

The solvation structure and dynamics of small organic molecules at the methanol-silica interface are important for understanding the reaction dynamics in heterogeneous catalysis as well as the transport mechanisms in liquid chromatography. The role of solute polarity in interfacial solvation at the methanol-silica interface has been investigated via umbrella sampling molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and 1,3-propanediol and n-pentane were selected as representative species of polar and apolar solutes. Free energy calculations reveal that it took a similar free energy cost to transfer both solute molecules from the interface to the bulk, despite the huge difference in their polarities. The 1,3-propendiol molecule can penetrate the adsorbed methanol layer and form hydrogen bonds with the silica surface with its backbone perpendicular to the silica surface, resulting in a significant slowdown of translational and rotational dynamics. Further analysis of solvent density and solute orientations suggest that at the minimum of the adsorption free energy curve, the 1,3-propanediol molecule is in a desolvated state, while n-pentane is in a solvated state. The collective effect of solute concentration has also been studied by unbiased MD simulations, and the free energy barriers of transferring the solute molecule from the interface to bulk, as well as the parallel diffusion coefficients at the interface, show a non-monotonic dependence on solute concentration, which can be related to the crowded environment in the interfacial layers.

Anomalously Slow Conformational Change Dynamics of Polar Groups Anchored to Hydrophobic Surfaces in Aqueous Media

Water molecules within a thin hydration layer, spontaneously generated on hydrophobic protein surfaces, are reported to form a poorly dynamic network structure. However, how such a water network affects the conformational change dynamics of polar groups has never been explored, although such polar groups play a critical role in protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions. In the present work, we utilized as model protein surfaces a series of self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) appended with polar (Fmoc) or ionic (FITC) fluorescent head groups that were tethered via a 1.5-nm-long flexible oligoether chain to a hydrophobic silicon wafer surface, which was densely covered with paraffinic chains. We found that, not only in deionized water but also in aqueous buffer, these oligoether-appended head groups at ambient temperatures both displayed an anomalously slow conformational change, which required ∼10 h to reach a thermodynamically equilibrated state. We suppose that these behaviors reflect the poorly dynamic and low-permittivity natures of the thin hydration layer.

Nanoconfinement-Mediated Water Treatment: From Fundamental to Application

Safe and clean water is of pivotal importance to all living species and the ecosystem on earth. However, the accelerating economy and industrialization of mankind generate water pollutants with much larger quantity and higher complexity than ever before, challenging the efficacy of traditional water treatment technologies. The flourishing researches on nanomaterials and nanotechnologies in the past decade have generated new understandings on many fundamental processes and brought revolutionary upgrades to various traditional technologies in almost all areas, including water treatment. An indispensable step toward the real application of nanomaterials in water treatment is to confine them in large processable substrate to address various inherent issues, such as spontaneous aggregation, difficult operation and potential environmental risks. Strikingly, when the size of the spatial restriction provided by the substrate is on the order of only one or several nanometers, referred to as nanoconfinement, the phase behavior of matter and the energy diagram of a chemical reaction could be utterly changed. Nevertheless, the relationship between such changes under nanoconfinement and their implications for water treatment is rarely elucidated systematically. In this Critical Review, we will briefly summarize the current state-of-the-art of the nanomaterials, as well as the nanoconfined analogues (i.e., nanocomposites) developed for water treatment. Afterward, we will put emphasis on the effects of nanoconfinement from three aspects, that is, on the structure and behavior of water molecules, on the formation (e.g., crystallization) of confined nanomaterials, and on the nanoenabled chemical reactions. For each aspect, we will build the correlation between the nanoconfinement effects and the current studies for water treatment. More importantly, we will make proposals for future studies based on the missing links between some of the nanoconfinement effects and the water treatment technologies. Through this Critical Review, we aim to raise the research attention on using nanoconfinement as a fundamental guide or even tool to advance water treatment technologies.

Energy Stored in Nanoscale Water Capillary Bridges between Patchy Surfaces

We perform molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of a water capillary bridge (WCB) expanding between two identical chemically heterogeneous surfaces. The model surfaces, based on the structure of silica, are hydrophobic and are decorated by a hydrophilic (hydroxylated silica) patch that is in contact with the WCB. Our MD simulations results, including the WCB profile and forces induced on the walls, are in agreement with capillarity theory even at the smallest wall separations studied, h = 2.5-3 nm. Remarkably, the energy stored in the WCB can be relatively large, with an energy density that is comparable to that harvested by water-responsive materials used in actuators and nanogenerators.

The joint effect of surface polarity and concentration on the structure and dynamics of acetonitrile solution: a molecular dynamics simulation study

The interfacial properties of the acetonitrile (ACN)-water-silica interface have great implications in both liquid chromatography and heterogeneous catalysis. We have performed molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of ACN and water binary solutions to give a comprehensive study of the collective effect of silica surface polarity and ACN concentration on interfacial structures and dynamics by tuning both surface charges and ACN concentration. MD simulation results indicate that many properties in the liquid-solid interface region undergo a monotonic change as the silica surface is tuned from polar to apolar due to the weakening of hydrogen bonding, while their dependence on ACN concentration is presumably governed by the preferential adsorption of water at the silica surface over ACN. However, at apolar surfaces, the interfacial structures of both water and ACN behave like the liquid-vapor interface, and this resemblance leads to an enrichment of ACN at the interface as well as accelerated dynamics, which is very different from that in the bulk solution. The organization of ACN molecules at both polar and apolar surfaces can be attributed to the amphiphilic nature of ACN, by which the micro-heterogeneity domain formed can persist both in the bulk and at the liquid-solid interface. Moreover, extending diffusion analysis to the second layer of the interface shows that the interfacial transport pathways at polar surfaces are likely very different from that of apolar surfaces. These simulation results give a full spectrum description of the ACN/water liquid-solid interface at the microscopic level and will be helpful for explaining related spectroscopic experiments and understanding the microscopic mechanisms of separation protocols in current chromatography applications.

Water dynamics at electrified graphene interfaces: a jump model perspective

The reorientation dynamics of water at electrified graphene interfaces was recently shown [J. Phys. Chem. Lett., 2020, 11, 624-631] to exhibit a surprising and strongly asymmetric behavior: positive electrode potentials slow down interfacial water reorientation, while for increasingly negative potentials water dynamics first accelerates before reaching an extremum and then being retarded for larger potentials. Here we use classical molecular dynamics simulations to determine the molecular mechanisms governing water dynamics at electrified interfaces. We show that changes in water reorientation dynamics with electrode potential arise from the electrified interfaces' impacts on water hydrogen-bond jump exchanges, and can be quantitatively described by the extended jump model. Finally, our simulations indicate that no significant dynamical heterogeneity occurs within the water interfacial layer next to the weakly interacting graphene electrode.

Static field gradient NMR studies of water diffusion in mesoporous silica

NMR diffusometry is used to ascertain the pore-size dependent water diffusion in MCM-41 and SBA-15 silica over broad temperature ranges. Detailed analysis of 1H and 2H NMR stimulated-echo decays reveals that fast water motion through voids between different silica particles impairs such studies in the general case. However, water diffusion inside single pores is probed in the present approach, which applies high static field gradients to enhance the spatial resolution of the experiment and uses excess water in combination with subzero temperatures to embed the silica particles in an ice matrix and, thus, to suppress interparticle water motion. It is found that the diffusion of confined water slows down by almost two orders of magnitude when the pore diameter is reduced from 5.4 nm to 2.1 nm at weak cooling. In the narrower silica pores, the temperature dependence of the self-diffusion coefficient of water is well described by an Arrhenius law with an activation energy of Ea = 0.40 eV. The Arrhenius behavior extends over a broad temperature range of at least 207-270 K, providing evidence against a fragile-to-strong crossover in response to a proposed liquid-liquid phase transition near 225 K. In the wider silica pores, partial crystallization results in a discontinuous temperature dependence. Explicitly, the diffusion coefficients drop when cooling through the pore-size dependent melting temperatures Tm of confined water. This finding can be rationalized by the fact that water can explore the whole pore volumes above Tm, but is restricted to narrow interfacial layers sandwiched between silica walls and ice crystallites below this temperature. Comparing our findings for water diffusion with previous results for water reorientation, we find significantly different temperature dependencies, indicating that the Stokes-Einstein-Debye relation is not obeyed.

The effect of surface polarity on the structure and collective dynamics of liquid ethanol

Typical configurations of ethanol during polarity modulation.

Cosolvent Impurities in SWCNT Nanochannel Confinement: Length Dependence of Water Dynamics Investigated with Atomistic Simulations

The advent of nanotechnology has seen a growing interest in the nature of fluid flow and transport under nanoconfinement. The present study leverages fully atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to study the effect of nanochannel length and intrusion of molecules of the organic solvent, hexafluoro-2-propanol (HFIP), on the dynamical characteristics of water within it. Favorable interactions of HFIP with the nanochannels comprised of single-walled carbon nanotubes traps them over time scales greater than 100 ns, and confinement confers small but distinguishable spatial redistribution between neighboring HFIP pairs. Water molecules within the nanochannels show clear signatures of dynamical slowdown relative to bulk water even for pure systems. The presence of HFIP causes further rotational and translational slowdown in waters when the nanochannel dimension falls below a critical length of 30 Å. The enhanced slowdown in the presence of HFIP is quantified from characteristic relaxation parameters and diffusion coefficients in the absence and presence of HFIP. It is finally seen that the net flow of water between the ends of the nanochannel shows a decreasing dependence with nanochannel length only when the number of HFIP molecules is small. These results lend insights into devising ways of modulating solvent properties within nanochannels with cosolvent impurities.

Structure, Polarization, and Sum Frequency Generation Spectrum of Interfacial Water on Anatase TiO2

The photocatalytic activity of TiO₂ for water splitting has been known for decades, yet the adsorption structure and hydrogen bonding of water at the interface with TiO₂ have remained controversial. We investigate the prototypical aqueous interface with anatase TiO₂ (101) using ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) with the strongly constrained and appropriately normed (SCAN) density functional, recently shown to provide an excellent description of the properties of bulk liquid water. We find that water forms a stable bilayer of intact molecules with ice-like dynamics and enhanced dipole moment and polarizability on the anatase surface. The orientational order and H-bond environment of interfacial water are reflected in the computed sum frequency generation (SFG) spectrum, which agrees well with recent measurements in the OH stretching frequency range (3000-3600 cm^-1). Additional AIMD simulations for a model interface with 66% of dissociated water in the contact layer show that surface hydroxyls disrupt the order in the bilayer and lead to a much faster orientational dynamics of interfacial water. Nonetheless, the computed SFG spectrum for the hydroxylated surface also agrees with experiment, suggesting that SFG measurements in a wider frequency range would be necessary to unambiguously identify the character of interfacial water on anatase.

Computational discovery of chemically patterned surfaces that effect unique hydration water dynamics

The interactions of water with solid surfaces govern their apparent hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity, influenced at the molecular scale by surface coverage of chemical groups of varied nonpolar/polar character. Recently, it has become clear that the precise patterning of surface groups, and not simply average surface coverage, has a significant impact on the structure and thermodynamics of hydration layer water, and, in turn, on macroscopic interfacial properties. Here we show that patterning also controls the dynamics of hydration water, a behavior frequently thought to be leveraged by biomolecules to influence functional dynamics, but yet to be generalized. To uncover the role of surface heterogeneities, we couple a genetic algorithm to iterative molecular dynamics simulations to design the patterning of surface functional groups, at fixed coverage, to either minimize or maximize proximal water diffusivity. Optimized surface configurations reveal that clustering of hydrophilic groups increases hydration water mobility, while dispersing them decreases it, but only if hydrophilic moieties interact with water through directional, hydrogen-bonding interactions. Remarkably, we find that, across different surfaces, coverages, and patterns, both the chemical potential for inserting a methane-sized hydrophobe near the interface and, in particular, the hydration water orientational entropy serve as strong predictors for hydration water diffusivity, suggesting that these simple thermodynamic quantities encode the way surfaces control water dynamics. These results suggest a deep and intriguing connection between hydration water thermodynamics and dynamics, demonstrating that subnanometer chemical surface patterning is an important design parameter for engineering solid-water interfaces with applications spanning separations to catalysis.

Insights on magnesium and sulfate ions' adsorption on the surface of sodium alumino-silicate hydrate (NASH) gel: a molecular dynamics study

The movement of water and ions in sodium alumino-silicate hydrate gel (NASH) influences the physical and chemical properties of the geopolymer material. In this paper, in order to better understand the structure and dynamics of water and ions in the interfacial region of the NASH gel, molecular dynamics was utilized to model Na2SO4 and MgSO4 solutions (both at 0.44 mol L-1) near the NASH surface. The broken silicate-aluminate surface network, with predominant percentage of randomly connected Q1 and Q2 silicate and aluminate species, provides plenty of non-bridging oxygen sites to accept the H bond from the surface water molecules, contributing toward a strongly adsorbed hydration layer with a thickness of around 5 Å. Consequently, the water molecule in the hydration layer exhibits increased density, increased dipole moment magnitude, orientation preference, and slow diffusivity. In contrast, up to 36.4% of the counter sodium ions, originally caged in the vacancies on the NASH surface, gradually dissociate from the silicate-aluminate skeleton and migrate into the bulk solution, which is consistent with the experimentally observed leaching process of alkali ions in the geopolymer material. In the MgSO4 solution, the magnesium ions-with a smaller ionic radius-penetrate into the silicate-aluminate skeleton vacancy, have 1.8 to 2.5 coordinated solid oxygen atoms, and remain on the NASH surface for a fairly longer time due to the stable Mg-O bonds. Mg species adsorbed on the inner sphere got rooted onto the hydroxyl layer, healing the damaged silicate-aluminate structures and stabilizing the network by inhibiting Na ion immigration into the solution. Mg ions in the outer layer, on average, associated with around one neighboring SO4 ion, forming ionic pairs and accumulating into large Mg-SO4 clusters, to help the immobilization of sulfate ions on the NASH surface.

Influence of aluminates on the structure and dynamics of water and ions in the nanometer channel of calcium silicate hydrate (C–S–H) gel

Al species incorporated in silicate chains enhance hydrophilicity and cation immobilization ability of the C–S–H gel.

Measuring viscosity inside mesoporous silica using protein-bound molecular rotor probe

Fluorescence spectroscopy of protein-bound molecular rotors Cy3 and Cy5 is used to monitor the effective viscosity inside the pores of two types of mesoporous silica (SBA-15 and MCF) with pore diameters between 8.9 and 33 nm.

Molecular dynamics study on ions and water confined in the nanometer channel of Friedel's salt: structure, dynamics and interfacial interaction

As a promising layered double hydroxide, Friedel's salt has gained popularity.

Effect of an external electric field on capillary filling of water in hydrophilic silica nanochannels

Development of functional nanofluidic devices requires understanding the fundamentals of capillary driven flow in nanochannels.

Dynamics of Water Monolayers Confined by Chemically Heterogeneous Surfaces: Observation of Surface-Induced Anisotropic Diffusion

Water present in confining geometries plays key roles in many systems of scientific and technological relevance. Prominent examples are living cells and nanofluidic devices. Despite its importance, a complete understanding of the dynamics of water in nanoscale confinement remains elusive. In this work, we use molecular dynamics (MD) simulation to investigate the diffusive dynamics of water monolayers confined in chemically heterogeneous silica slit pores. The effect of chemical heterogeneity is systematically investigated through the fraction f_SiOH of randomly distributed surface sites that possess hydroxyl functional groups. Partial hydroxylation results in heterogeneous surfaces comprising nanoscale hydrophobic and hydrophilic regions. We find that the in-plane diffusivity of water increases monotonically with f_SiOH; at low surface hydroxylation (f_SiOH ≤ 50%), slow water dynamics arise due to the formation of icelike structures in the hydrophobic regions, while at f_SiOH ≥ 75%, surface-water H-bonds in the hydrophilic regions result in faster dynamics. We show that surface patterning with ordered hydrophobic and hydrophilic "stripes" can be used to induce one-dimensional diffusion, with water diffusing through the slit pore preferentially along the direction of the hydrophilic surface patterns.

Effects of confinement between attractive and repulsive walls on the thermodynamics of an anomalous fluid

We study via molecular-dynamics simulations the thermodynamics of an anomalous fluid confined in a slit pore with one wall structured and attractive and another unstructured and repulsive. We find that the phase diagram of the homogeneous part of the confined fluid is shifted to higher temperatures, densities, and pressures with respect to the bulk, but it can be rescaled on the bulk case. We calculate a moderate increase of mobility of the homogeneous confined fluid that we interpret as a consequence of the layering due to confinement and the collective modes due to long-range correlations. We show that, as in bulk, the confined fluid has structural, diffusion, and density anomalies that order in the waterlike hierarchy, and a liquid-liquid critical point (LLCP). The overall anomalous region moves to higher temperatures, densities, and pressure, and the LLCP displaces to higher temperature compared to bulk. Motivated by experiments, we calculate also the phase diagram not just for the homogeneous part of the confined fluid but for the entire fluid in the pore, and we show that it is shifted toward higher pressures but preserves the thermodynamics, including the LLCP. Because our model has waterlike properties, we argue that in experiments with supercooled water confined in slit pores with a width of >3 nm if hydrophilic and of >1.5 nm if hydrophobic, the existence of the LLCP could be easier to test than in bulk, where it is not directly accessible.

Wall embedded electrodes to modify electroosmotic flow in silica nanoslits

Electroosmotic flow in a silica slit channel with nonuniform surface charge density is investigated. In nanoconfinement, the electrical double layer occupies a non-negligible fraction of the system. Therefore, modifying the charge density on specific locations on the channel wall surface allows effective manipulation of the electroosmotic flow rates. In the present study, extensive (160 ns) nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations are conducted to investigate the ability of controlling the electroosmotic flow control in a nanoslit by patterning the surface potential. The mechanism to modify the surface charge consists of a set of charged electrodes embedded within one of the channel walls. The presence of the embedded electrodes results in the redistribution of ions in the electrolyte solution and in the alteration of the electroosmotic flow throughout the nanochannel. Indeed, the results reveal significant changes in the electroosmotic driving force and velocity profiles including local flow reversal. This study provides physical insight into the direct manipulation of the electrokinetic flow in nanoslits.

Confined Water as Model of Supercooled Water

Water in confined geometries has obvious relevance in biology, geology, and other areas where the material properties are strongly dependent on the amount and behavior of water in these types of materials. Another reason to restrict the size of water domains by different types of geometrical confinements has been the possibility to study the structural and dynamical behavior of water in the deeply supercooled regime (e.g., 150-230 K at ambient pressure), where bulk water immediately crystallizes to ice. In this paper we give a short review of studies with this particular goal. However, from these studies it is also clear that the interpretations of the experimental data are far from evident. Therefore, we present three main interpretations to explain the experimental data, and we discuss their advantages and disadvantages. Unfortunately, none of the proposed scenarios is able to predict all the observations for supercooled and glassy bulk water, indicating that either the structural and dynamical alterations of confined water are too severe to make predictions for bulk water or the differences in how the studied water has been prepared (applied cooling rate, resulting density of the water, etc.) are too large for direct and quantitative comparisons.

Confinement effects on the properties of Janus dimers

We show how the confinement between two parallel walls affects the self-assembly, and dynamic and thermodynamic properties of Janus dumbbells.

Exploration of the presence of bulk-like water in AOT reverse micelles and water-in-oil nanodroplets: the role of charged interfaces, confinement size and properties of water

We show that the distance from the interface at which bulk-like properties are recovered strongly depends on the choice of order parameter being probed: translational < tetrahedral ≪ dipolar orientation.

Dynamic heterogeneity controls diffusion and viscosity near biological interfaces

At a nanometer scale, the behavior of biological fluids is largely governed by interfacial physical chemistry. This may manifest as slowed or anomalous diffusion. Here we describe how measures developed for studying glassy systems allow quantitative measurement of interfacial effects on water dynamics, showing that correlated motions of particles near a surface result in a viscosity greater than anticipated from individual particle motions. This effect arises as a fundamental consequence of spatial heterogeneity on nanometer length scales and applies to any fluid near any surface. Increased interfacial viscosity also causes the classic finding that large solutes such as proteins diffuse much more slowly than predicted in bulk water. This has previously been treated via an empirical correction to the solute size: the hydrodynamic radius. Using measurements of quantities from theories of glass dynamics, we can now calculate diffusion constants from molecular details alone, eliminating the empirical correction factor.

Bulk and interfacial liquid water as a transient network

The special macroscopic properties of liquid water stem from its structure as a complex network of molecules connected by hydrogen bonds. While the dynamics of single molecules within this network has been extensively investigated, only little attention has been paid to the closed loops (meshes) of hydrogen-bonded molecules which determine the network topology. Using molecular dynamics simulations we analyze the size, shape, geometrical arrangement, and dynamical stability of loops containing up to 10 hydrogen bonds. We find that six-membered loops in liquid water even at room temperature retain a striking similarity with the well-known structure of ice. Analyzing the network dynamics we find that rings of more than five hydrogen bonds are stabilized compared to a random collection containing the same number of single bonds. We finally show that in the vicinity of hydrophobic and hydrophilic interfaces loops arrange in a preferred orientation.

Influence of disordered porous media on the anomalous properties of a simple water model

The thermodynamic, dynamic, and structural behavior of a water-like system confined in a matrix is analyzed for increasing confining geometries. The liquid is modeled by a two-dimensional associating lattice gas model that exhibits density and diffusion anomalies, similar to the anomalies present in liquid water. The matrix is a triangular lattice in which fixed obstacles impose restrictions to the occupation of the particles. We show that obstacles shorten all lines, including the phase coexistence, the critical and the anomalous lines. The inclusion of a very dense matrix not only suppresses the anomalies but also the liquid-liquid critical point.

Structural and thermodynamic properties of water-membrane interphases: significance for peptide/membrane interactions

Water appears as a common intermediary in the mechanisms of interaction of proteins and polypeptides with membranes of different lipid composition. In this review, how water modulates the interaction of peptides and proteins with lipid membranes is discussed by correlating the thermodynamic response and the structural changes of water at the membrane interphases. The thermodynamic properties of the lipid-protein interaction are governed by changes in the water activity of monolayers of different lipid composition according to the lateral surface pressure. In this context, different water populations can be characterized below and above the phase transition temperature in relation to the CH₂ conformers' states in the acyl chains. According to water species present at the interphase, lipid membrane acts as a water state regulator, which determines the interfacial water domains in the surface. It is proposed that those domains are formed by the contact between lipids themselves and between lipids and the water phase, which are needed to trigger adsorption-insertion processes. The water domains are essential to maintain functional dynamical properties and are formed by water beyond the hydration shell of the lipid head groups. These confined water domains probably carries information in local units in relation to the lipid composition thus accounting for the link between lipidomics and aquaomics. The analysis of these results contributes to a new insight of the lipid bilayer as a non-autonomous, responsive (reactive) structure that correlates with the dynamical properties of a living system.