Water owns its peculiar properties to the dynamics of the hydrogen-bonded network. When water meets an interface, the network is terminated and the chemical characteristics of the interface can be viewed as the boundary-conditions to the bulk hydrogen-bonded network. The chemical characteristic of the interface will thus dictate not only the structure and dynamics but also the general properties of the interfacial water. We use static and transient vibrational sum-frequency generation spectroscopy to study the structure and dynamics of interfacial water at surfaces with tunable chemical characteristics. The chemical properties of the surface are tuned by using mixed self-assembled monolayers with different end groups (CH3, OH, and COOH) to tune the water affinity and chain lengths to tune the local surface roughness. We systematically examine how the surface characteristics influence the structure and dynamics of interfacial water through the surface vibrational spectrum of the OH stretching mode.

Structure and dynamics of water at surfaces with controlled chemical functionality

246th National Meeting (2013)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.