2016/03/14 by Hu, Wei, Li, Zhenyu, Yang, Jinlong
#FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1603.04372
A single water molecule has nothing special. However, macroscopic water displays many anomalous properties at the interface, such as a high surface tension, hydrophobicity and hydrophillicity. Although the underlying mechanism is still elusive, hydrogen bond is expected to have played an important role. An interesting question is if the few-water molecule clusters will be qualitatively different from a single molecule. Using adsorption behavior as an example, by carefully choosing two-dimensional silicene as the substrate material, we demonstrate that water monomer, dimer and trimer show contrasting properties. The additional water molecules in dimer and trimer induce a transition from physisorption to chemisorption then to dissociation on silicene. Such a hydrogen bond autocatalytic effect is expected to have a broad application potential in silicene-based water molecule sensor and metal-free catalyst for water dissociation.