Comment on "Pressure dependence of fragile-to-strong transition and a possible second critical point in supercooled confined water"

Self-Diffusion in Confined Water: A Comparison between the Dynamics of Supercooled Water in Hydrophobic Carbon Nanotubes and Hydrophilic Porous Silica

Confined liquids are model systems for the study of the metastable supercooled state, especially for bulk water, in which the onset of crystallization below 230 K hinders the application of experimental techniques. Nevertheless, in addition to suppressing crystallization, confinement at the nanoscale drastically alters the properties of water. Evidently, the behavior of confined water depends critically on the nature of the confining environment and the interactions of confined water molecules with the confining matrix. A comparative study of the dynamics of water under hydrophobic and hydrophilic confinement could therefore help to clarify the underlying interactions. As we demonstrate in this work using a few representative results from the relevant literature, the accurate assessment of the translational mobility of water molecules, especially in the supercooled state, can unmistakably distinguish between the hydrophilic and hydrophobic nature of the confining environments. Among the numerous experimental methods currently available, we selected nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in a field gradient, which directly measures the macroscopic translational self-diffusion coefficient, and quasi-elastic neutron scattering (QENS), which can determine the microscopic translational dynamics of the water molecules. Dielectric relaxation, which probes the re-orientational degrees of freedom, are also discussed.

Advances in the study of supercooled water

In this review, we report recent progress in the field of supercooled water. Due to its uniqueness, water presents numerous anomalies with respect to most simple liquids, showing polyamorphism both in the liquid and in the glassy state. We first describe the thermodynamic scenarios hypothesized for the supercooled region and in particular among them the liquid-liquid critical point scenario that has so far received more experimental evidence. We then review the most recent structural indicators, the two-state model picture of water, and the importance of cooperative effects related to the fact that water is a hydrogen-bonded network liquid. We show throughout the review that water's peculiar properties come into play also when water is in solution, confined, and close to biological molecules. Concerning dynamics, upon mild supercooling water behaves as a fragile glass former following the mode coupling theory, and it turns into a strong glass former upon further cooling. Connections between the slow dynamics and the thermodynamics are discussed. The translational relaxation times of density fluctuations show in fact the fragile-to-strong crossover connected to the thermodynamics arising from the existence of two liquids. When considering also rotations, additional crossovers come to play. Mobility-viscosity decoupling is also discussed in supercooled water and aqueous solutions. Finally, the polyamorphism of glassy water is considered through experimental and simulation results both in bulk and in salty aqueous solutions. Grains and grain boundaries are also discussed.

Breakdown of the Stokes-Einstein relation in supercooled water: the jump-diffusion perspective

Although water is the most ubiquitous liquid it shows many thermodynamic and dynamic anomalies. Some of the anomalies further intensify in the supercooled regime. While many experimental and theoretical studies have focused on the thermodynamic anomalies of supercooled water, fewer studies explored the dynamical anomalies very extensively. This is due to the intricacy of the experimental measurement of the dynamical properties of supercooled water. Violation of the Stokes-Einstein relation (SER), an important relation connecting the diffusion of particles with the viscosity of the medium, is one of the major dynamical anomalies. In absence of experimentally measured viscosity, researchers used to check the validity of SER indirectly using average translational relaxation time or α-relaxation time. Very recently, the viscosity of supercooled water was accurately measured at a wide range of temperatures and pressures. This allowed direct verification of the SER at different temperature-pressure thermodynamic state points. An increasing breakdown of the SER was observed with decreasing temperature. Increasing pressure reduces the extent of breakdown. Although some well-known theories explained the above breakdown, a detailed molecular mechanism was still elusive. Recently, a translational jump-diffusion (TJD) approach has been able to quantitatively explain the breakdown of the SER in pure supercooled water and an aqueous solution of methanol. The objective of this article is to present a detailed and state-of-the-art analysis of the past and present works on the breakdown of SER in supercooled water with a specific focus on the new TJD approach for explaining the breakdown of the SER.

Vibrational dynamics of confined supercooled water

The quest for a possible liquid-liquid coexistence line in supercooled water below its homogeneous nucleation temperature is faced by confining water within a porous silica substrate (MCM-41). This system is investigated by synchrotron radiation infrared spectroscopy, exploring both the intramolecular and the intermolecular vibrational dynamics, in the temperature range from ambient down to ∼120 K, along several isobaric paths between 0.7 kbar and 3.0 kbar. Upon lowering the temperature, the OH-stretching band shows that the intramolecular vibrational dynamics continuously evolves from predominantly liquidlike to predominantly icelike. An abrupt change in the line shape of the intermolecular vibrational band between 220 K and 240 K, depending on the pressure, is the signature of nucleation of ice within the MCM-41 pores. These findings do not support the presence of two liquid phases and provide evidence for the coexistence of liquid water and ice in water confined in MCM-41.

Possible relations between supercooled and glassy confined water and amorphous bulk ice

A proposed relaxation scenario of bulk water based on studies of confined water and low density amorphous ice.

Disruption of Hydrogen-Bonding Network Eliminates Water Anomalies Normally Observed on Cooling to Its Calorimetric Glass Transition

The calorimetric glass-transition temperature of water is 136 K, but extrapolation of thermodynamic and relaxation properties of water from ambient temperature to below its homogeneous nucleation temperature T_H = 235 K predicts divergence at T_S = 228 K. The "no-man's land" between the T_H and glassy water crystallization temperature of 150 K, which is encountered on warming up from the vitrified state, precludes a straightforward reconciliation of the two incompatible temperature dependences of water properties, above 235 K and below 150 K. The addition of lithium chloride to water allows bypassing both T_H and T_S on cooling, resulting in the dynamics with no features except the calorimetric glass transition, still at 136 K. We show that lithium chloride prevents hydrogen-bonding network completion in water on cooling, as manifested, in particular, in changing microscopic diffusion mechanism of the water molecules. Thus thermodynamic and relaxation peculiarities exhibited by pure water on cooling to its glass transition, such as the existence of the T_H and T_S, must be associated specifically with the hydrogen-bonding network.

Crossover from localized to diffusive water dynamics in carbon nanohorns: A comprehensive quasielastic neutron-scattering analysis

Incoherent neutron scattering by water confined in carbon nanohorns was measured with the backscattering spectrometer SPHERES and analyzed in exemplary breadth and depth. Quasielastic spectra admit δ-plus-Kohlrausch fits over a wide q and T range. From the q and T dependence of fitted amplitudes and relaxation times, however, it becomes clear that the fits do not represent a uniform physical process, but that there is a crossover from localized motion at low T to diffusive α relaxation at high T. The crossover temperature of about 210 to 230 K increases with decreasing wave number, which is incompatible with a thermodynamic strong-fragile transition. Extrapolated diffusion coefficients D(T) indicate that water motion is at room temperature about 2.5 times slower than in the bulk; in the supercooled state this factor becomes smaller. At even higher temperatures, where the α spectrum is essentially flat, a few percentages of the total scattering go into a Lorentzian with a width of about 1.6μeV, probably due to functional groups on the surface of the nanohorns.

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.

Relaxation dynamics of deeply supercooled confined water in l,l-diphenylalanine micro/nanotubes

The temperature dependence (10–290 K) of the low-frequency (20–150 cm⁻¹) Raman-active phonon modes of deeply supercooled confined water in l,l-diphenylalanine micro/nanotubes was analyzed.

Dynamics and thermodynamics of polymer glasses

The fate of matter when decreasing the temperature at constant pressure is that of passing from gas to liquid and, subsequently, from liquid to crystal. However, a class of materials can exist in an amorphous phase below the melting temperature. On cooling such materials, a glass is formed; that is, a material with the rigidity of a solid but exhibiting no long-range order. The study of the thermodynamics and dynamics of glass-forming systems is the subject of continuous research. Within the wide variety of glass formers, an important sub-class is represented by glass forming polymers. The presence of chain connectivity and, in some cases, conformational disorder are unfavourable factors from the point of view of crystallization. Furthermore, many of them, such as amorphous thermoplastics, thermosets and rubbers, are widely employed in many applications. In this review, the peculiarities of the thermodynamics and dynamics of glass-forming polymers are discussed, with particular emphasis on those topics currently the subject of debate. In particular, the following aspects will be reviewed in the present work: (i) the connection between the pronounced slowing down of glassy dynamics on cooling towards the glass transition temperature (Tg) and the thermodynamics; and, (ii) the fate of the dynamics and thermodynamics below Tg. Both aspects are reviewed in light of the possible presence of a singularity at a finite temperature with diverging relaxation time and zero configurational entropy. In this context, the specificity of glass-forming polymers is emphasized.

Protein dynamics by neutron scattering

Neutron scattering techniques represent a powerful tool for characterizing both the structure and dynamical properties of bio-systems, for example, proteins and membranes interacting with their solvents. In this paper, Elastic Neutron Scattering (ENS) data collected at the Institut Laue-Langevin (Grenoble, France) on dry and D2O hydrated lysozyme by varying hydration level are presented, and compared with previously published data on the same protein system, also with the addition of bio-protectants. The data have been collected with three different spectrometers, i.e. IN13, IN10 and IN4. This set of ENS data gives direct access to the temperature behavior of both (i) the Mean Square Displacement (MSD) and (ii) the characteristic system relaxation time. As a result, an explicative hypothesis on the relationship between the so-called "protein dynamical transition" (PDT) and the "fragile-to-strong dynamical crossover" (FSC) is formulated. Furthermore, by taking into proper account the effect of the finite instrumental energy resolution of the used spectrometers, the vibrational MSD of dry and hydrated lysozyme is calculated. The vibrational MSD of the lysozyme in the dry state resulted to be higher than the one in the hydrated state; the latter reaches the former at a temperature value of T=220K that corresponds to the temperature at which the FSC occurs. As a result, a cage effect resulting from the hydration water on the protein surface is hypothesized and subsequently linked to the FSC.

Low-temperature water dynamics in an aqueous methanol solution

An aqueous methanol solution (x(MeOH) = 0.30) has been studied by quasielastic neutron scattering. The single-particle water dynamics were effectively isolated by employing deuterated methanol. A smooth dynamic transition to a sub-Arrhenius temperature dependence has been observed in the relaxation times. We associate this behavior with the formation of small crystallites in the system. These findings are compared with molecular dynamics simulations and previous nuclear magnetic resonance measurements. We discuss possible dynamic signatures of structuring in the mixture.

Hydration-dependent dynamics of deeply cooled water under strong confinement

We have measured the hydration-level dependence of the single-particle dynamics of water confined in the ordered mesoporous silica MCM-41. The dynamic crossover observed at full hydration is absent at monolayer hydration. The monolayer dynamics are significantly slower than those of water in a fully hydrated pore at ambient temperatures. At low temperatures, the opposite is found to be true. These results underscore the importance of water's tetrahedral hydrogen-bond network in accounting for its low temperature dynamic properties.

Water dynamics in a lithium chloride aqueous solution probed by Brillouin neutron and x-ray scattering

We studied the collective excitations in an aqueous solution of lithium chloride over the temperature range of 270-205 K using neutron and x-ray Brillouin scattering. Both neutron and x-ray experiments revealed the presence of low- and high-frequency excitations, similar to the low- and high-frequency excitations in pure water. These two excitations were detectable through the entire temperature range of the experiment, at all probed values of the scattering momentum transfer (0.2 Å(-1) < Q < 1.8 Å(-1)). A wider temperature range was investigated using elastic intensity neutron and x-ray scans. Clear evidence of the crossover in the dynamics of the water molecules in the solution was observed in the single-particle relaxational dynamics on the µeV (nanosecond) time scale, but not in the collective dynamics on the meV (picosecond) time scale.

Density profile of water confined in cylindrical pores in MCM-41 silica

Recently, water absorbed in the porous silica material MCM-41-S15 has been used to demonstrate an apparent fragile to strong dynamical crossover on cooling below ∼220 K, and also to claim that the density of confined water reaches a minimum at a temperature around 200 K. Both of these behaviours are purported to arise from the crossing of a Widom line above a conjectured liquid-liquid critical point in bulk water. Here it is shown that traditional estimates of the pore diameter in this porous silica material (of order 15 Å) are too small to allow the amount of water that is observed to be absorbed by these materials (around 0.5 g H(2)O/g substrate) to be absorbed only inside the pore. Either the additional water is absorbed on the surface of the silica particles and outside the pores, or else the pores are larger than the traditional estimates. In addition the low Q Bragg intensities from a sample of MCM-41-S15 porous silica under different dry and wet conditions and with different hydrogen isotopes are simulated using a simple model of the water and silica density profile across the pore. It is found the best agreement of these intensities with experimental data is shown by assuming the much larger pore diameter of 25 Å (radius 12.5 Å). Qualitative agreement is found between these simulated density profiles and those found in recent empirical potential structure refinement simulations of the same data, even though the latter data did not specifically include the Bragg peaks in the structure refinement. It is shown that the change in the (100) peak intensity on cooling from 300 to 210 K, which previously has been ascribed to a change in density of the confined water on cooling, can equally be ascribed to a change in density profile at constant average density. It is further pointed out that, independent of whether the pore diameter really is as large as 25 Å or whether a significant amount of water is absorbed outside the pore, the earlier reports of a dynamic crossover in supercooled confined water could in fact be a crystallization transition in the larger pore or surface water.

Puzzle of protein dynamical transition

Despite recent extensive efforts, the nature of the dynamics of biological macromolecules still remains unclear. In particular, contradicting models have been proposed for explaining the temperature behavior of the mean square displacement, MSD, and of the system relaxation time, τ. To solve this puzzle, different neutron scattering experiments with different instrumental energy resolutions were performed on dry and hydrated lysozyme. The obtained results show that the so called dynamical transition: (i) is a finite instrumental energy resolution effect, and more specifically, it appears when the characteristic system relaxation time intersects the resolution time, (ii) it does not imply any transition in the dynamical properties of the systems, (iii) it is not due to the fragile-to-strong dynamical crossover (FSC) in the temperature behavior of the system relaxation time, differently to what S. H. Chen et al. proposed [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.2006, 103, 9012]. Furthermore, the obtained results confirm the change in the τ-temperature dependence at T = 220 K of S. H. Chen et al., and show that it is not due to finite instrumental energy resolution effects and it is not connected to numerical errors in the data analysis protocol, differently to what W. Doster et al. proposed [Phys. Rev. Lett.2010, 104, 098101].

Finite-size scaling study of the vapor-liquid critical properties of confined fluids: Crossover from three dimensions to two dimensions

We perform histogram-reweighting grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations of the Lennard-Jones fluid confined between two parallel hard walls and determine the vapor-liquid critical and coexistence properties in the range of sigma<or=H<or=6sigma and 10sigma<or=L(x),L(y)<or=28sigma, where H is the wall separation, L(x)=L(y) is the system size and sigma is the characteristic length. By matching the probability distribution of the ordering operator, P(M), to the three-dimensional (3D) and two-dimensional (2D) Ising universality classes according to the mixed-field finite-size scaling approach, we establish a "phase diagram" in the (H,L) plane, showing the boundary between four types of behavior: 3D, quasi-3D, quasi-2D, and 2D. In order to facilitate 2D critical point calculation, we present a four-parameter analytical expression for the 2D Ising universal distribution. We show that the infinite-system-size critical points obtained by extrapolation from the apparent 3D and 2D critical points have only minor differences with each other. In agreement with recent reports in the literature [Jana et al., J. Chem. Phys. 130, 214707 (2009)], we find departure from linearity in the relationship between critical temperature and inverse wall separation, as well as nonmonotonic dependence of the critical density and the liquid density at coexistence upon wall separation. Additional studies of the ST2 model of water show similar behavior, which suggests that these are quite general properties of confined fluids.

Suppression of the dynamic transition in surface water at low hydration levels: a study of water on rutile

Our quasielastic neutron-scattering experiments and molecular-dynamics simulations probing surface water on rutile (TiO2) have demonstrated that a sufficiently high hydration level is a prerequisite for the temperature-dependent crossover in the nanosecond dynamics of hydration water. Below the monolayer coverage of mobile surface water, a weak temperature dependence of the relaxation times with no apparent crossover is observed. We associate the dynamic crossover with interlayer jumps of the mobile water molecules, which become possible only at a sufficiently high hydration level.

Investigating hydration dependence of dynamics of confined water: monolayer, hydration water and Maxwell-Wagner processes

The dynamics of water confined in silica matrices MCM-41 C10 and C18, with pore diameter of 21 and 36 A, respectively, is examined by broadband dielectric spectroscopy (10(-2)-10(9) Hz) and differential scanning calorimetry for a wide temperature interval (110-340 K). The dynamics from capillary condensed hydration water and surface monolayer of water are separated in the analysis. Contrary to previous reports, the rotational dynamics are shown to be virtually independent on the hydration level and pore size. Moreover, a third process, also reported for other systems, and exhibiting a saddlelike temperature dependence is investigated. We argue that this process is due to a Maxwell-Wagner process and not to strongly bound surface water as previously suggested in the literature. The dynamics of this process is strongly dependent on the amount of hydration water in the pores. The anomalous temperature dependence can then easily be explained by a loss of hydration water at high temperatures in contradiction to previous explanations.

Observation of a dynamic crossover in RNA hydration water which triggers a dynamic transition in the biopolymer

High-resolution quasielastic neutron scattering spectroscopy was used to measure H2O and D2O hydrated RNA samples. The contribution of scattering from RNA was subtracted out by taking the difference of the signals between the two samples. The measurements were made at a series of temperatures from 270 K down to 180 K. The relaxing-cage model was used to analyze the difference quasielastic spectra. We observed clear evidence of a fragile-to-strong dynamic crossover (FSC) at TL=220 K in RNA hydration water. We further show that the mean-square displacements of the hydrogen atoms in both RNA and its hydration water exhibit a sharp change in slope at approximately the same temperature 220 K. This latter fact suggests that the dynamic transition in RNA is triggered by the abrupt change of mobility of the hydration water at its FSC temperature.

Effect of confinement on the liquid-liquid phase transition of supercooled water

We report on an observation of the phase transition between two liquid phases of supercooled confined water in simulations. The temperature of the liquid-liquid transition of water at zero pressure slightly decreases due to confinement in the hydrophobic pore. The hydrophilic confinement affects this temperature in the opposite direction and shifts the critical point of the liquid-liquid transition to a higher pressure. As a result, in a strongly hydrophilic pore the liquid-liquid phase transition becomes continuous at zero pressure, indicating the shift of its critical point from negative to a positive pressure. These findings indicate that experimental studies of water confined in the pores of various hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity may clarify the location of the liquid-liquid critical point of bulk water.