Vibrational sum frequency generation spectroscopy is used to study the interactions of the charged soluble organic surfactant sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) with an insoluble 1,2-dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DPPC) monolayer at the air-aqueous interface. Results indicate that the surfactant species compete for surface sites in the mixed system, with a lower monolayer number density of ...

Recent quantum mechanical (QM) calculations for a monolayer of H(2)O on Ru(0001) suggested a novel stable structure with half the waters dissociated. However, different studies on Pt(111) suggested an undissociated bilayer structure in which the outer half of the water has the OH bonds toward the surface rather than the O lone pair. Since water layers on Pt are important in many catalytic proce...

A combined scanning tunneling microscopy and density-functional theory (DFT) study shows a rich structure of water monolayers adsorbed on ZnO(1010) at room temperature. Most of the water is in a lowest-energy configuration where every second molecule is dissociated. It coexists with an energetically almost degenerate configuration consisting of a fully molecular water monolayer. Parts of the la...

The presence of a water layer on the surface of muscovite mica under ambient conditions is well established. The water molecules are well ordered and seem to be oriented, leading to an icelike monolayer (probably ferroelectric) in epitaxial relation with the mica surface. We have imaged and characterized the height and contact angle of ordered water layer(s) formed by wetting and de-wetting pro...