Dissociative chemisorption of H2O at the MgO(100)-water interface has been investigated both experimentally and theoretically. In particular, metastable impact electron spectroscopy (MIES) was used to image the density of occupied states on the MgO(100)/Mo(100) surface for various degrees of water exposure. After multilayer water desorption, spectral features typical of surface hydroxyls are pr...

In this contribution we attempt to correlate the dynamical states of water molecules in reverse micelles with a solvolysis reaction in accordance with the activation energy barrier crossing model at the micellar interface. Precise measurement of the different dynamical states of water molecules at the reverse micellar interface with various degrees of hydration is achieved through temperature-d...

Nanoscopic and microscopic water droplets and ice crystals embedded in liquid hydrophobic surroundings are key components of aerosols, rocks, oil fields and the human body. The chemical properties of such droplets critically depend on the interfacial structure of the water droplet. Here we report the surface structure of 200 nm-sized water droplets in mixtures of hydrophobic oils and surfactant...

The hydrophobic character of the air/water interface affects the oligomeric composition of insulin. By using interface-specific vibrational sum frequency spectroscopy and calculations of insulin monomer and dimer second-order nonlinear susceptibilities χ((2)), we show that insulin monomers segregate to the air/water interface.

The GaN/ZnO alloy functions as a visible-light photocatalyst for splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. As a first step toward understanding the mechanism and energetics of water-splitting reactions, we investigate the microscopic structure of the aqueous interfaces of the GaN/ZnO alloy and compare them with the aqueous interfaces of pure GaN and ZnO. Specifically, we have studied the (101̄0)...

The bonding configuration and the heat of adsorption of a furfural molecule on the Pd(111) surface were determined by ab initio density-functional-theory calculations. The dynamics of pure liquid water, the liquid-solid interface formed by liquid water and the Pd(111) surface, as well as furfural at the water-Pd interface, were investigated by ab initio molecular dynamics simulations at finite ...

We investigate the water-oil interface using molecular dynamics simulations of realistic models of alkanes and water. The intrinsic density profiles are computed using a methodology that removes the smoothing effect of the capillary waves. We show that at 300 K the intrinsic width of the gap separating the oil and water phases spans little more than one water molecule diameter, and undergoes ve...

A spectroscopic method, based on the interface selectivity of second-harmonic generation, is used to obtain the polarity of liquid interfaces. In this paper the second-harmonic measurement of the spectrum of the polarity indicator molecule N,N′-diethyl-p-nitroaniline (DEPNA) at the air/water interface demonstrates the method. Two different approaches are used to measure the intramolecular charg...

Using a three-phase system, centimeter-scale monolayer gold nanoparticle (Au NP) films have been prepared that have long-range order and hydrophobic ligands. The system contains an interface between an aqueous phase containing Au NPs and an oil phase containing one of various types of amine ligands, and a water/air interface. As the Au NPs diffuse to the water/oil interface, ligand exchange tak...

The capabilities of using a confocal fluorescence microscope (CFM) for the interface-selective observation of dye molecules at an oil-water interface were evaluated. A simple expression for a criterion of interface selectivity was derived. The adsorptive behavior of dioctadecyl-rhodamine B at a cyclohexane-water interface was investigated experimentally to demonstrate the interface-selective ob...