Square ice in graphene nanocapillaries

Abstract

Adsorbed layers of water are ubiquitously present at surfaces and fill in microscopic pores, playing a central role in many phenomena in such diverse fields as materials science, geology, biology, tribology, nanotechnology. Despite such importance, the crystal structure of nanoconfined water remains largely unknown. Here we report high-resolution electron microscopy of mono- and few- layers of water confined between two graphene sheets, an archetypal example of hydrophobic confinement. Confined water is found to form square ice at room temperature - a phase with symmetry principally different from the conventional tetrahedral geometry of hydrogen bonding. The square ice has a high packing density with a lattice constant of 2.83 angstrom and during TEM observation assembles in bi- and tri- layer crystallites exhibiting AA stacking. Our findings are important for understanding of interfacial phenomena and, in particular, shed light on ultrafast transport of water through hydrophobic nanocapillaries. Our MD simulations show that square ice is likely to be common inside hydrophobic nanochannels, independent of their exact atomic makeup.

References in corpus (3)

• Van der Waals bonding in layered compounds from advanced first-principles calculations
• Imaging and Dynamics of Light Atoms and Molecules on Graphene
• Scanning Tunneling Microscopy Study and Nanomanipulation of Graphene-Coated Water on Mica

Cited by in corpus (42)

• Fluids at the Nanoscale: from continuum to sub-continuum transport
• Complete steric exclusion of ions and proton transport through confined monolayer water
• The first-principles phase diagram of monolayer nanoconfined water
• Molecular streaming and its voltage control in ångström scale channels
• Fast diffusion of water nanodroplets on graphene
• Adhesion, Stiffness and Instability in Atomically Thin MoS2 Bubbles
• Hydrophobic Ice Confined between Graphene and MoS2
• Molecular dynamics study of nanoconfined TIP4P/2005 water: how confinement and temperature affect diffusion and viscosity
• Nanoconfined fluids: Uniqueness of water compared to other liquids
• What Makes a Good Descriptor for Heterogeneous Ice Nucleation on OH-Patterned Surfaces
• Nanofluidics at the crossroads
• Evidence for Stable Square Ice from Quantum Monte Carlo
• Water under extreme confinement in graphene: Oscillatory dynamics, structure, and hydration pressure explained as a function of the confinement width
• Nanoconfinement Facilitates Reactions of Carbon Dioxide in Supercritical Water
• Microscopic kinetics pathway of salt crystallization in graphene nanocapillaries
• Crystal growth in confinement
• Sulfur and few-layer graphene interaction under thermal treatments
• Electronic, dielectric and optical properties of two dimensional and bulk ice: a multi-scale simulation study
• Anomalous Freezing of Low Dimensional Water Confined in Graphene Nanowrinkles
• Observation of liquid-solid transition of nanoconfined water at ambient temperature
• Structure and flow of low-dimensional water
• Stripe phase of two-dimensional core-softened systems: structure recognition
• Edge-Driven Phase Transitions in 2D Ice
• Two-dimensional non-linear hydrodynamics and nanofluidics
• Statistical modeling of equilibrium phase transition in confined fluids
• Electrocrystallization of Supercooled Water Confined between Graphene Layers
• Two-dimensional partitioned square ice confined in graphene/graphite nanocapillaries
• Variation of Critical Crystallization Pressure for the Formation of Square Ice in Graphene Nanocapillaries
• Computing chemical potentials of adsorbed or confined fluids
• A Critical Edge Number Revealed for Phase Stabilities of Two-Dimensional Ball-Stick Polygons
• Transport Properties of Water Confined in a Graphene Nanochannel
• A unified machine-learning framework for ab initio multiscale modeling of liquids
• Coulomb drag by motion of a monolayer polar crystal through graphene nanoconstriction
• Electrocrystallization of Supercooled Water in Confinement
• Correlation between 2D Square Ice and 3D Bulk Ice by Critical Crystallization Pressure
• Trivalent ion overcharging on electrified graphene
• Anisotropy of the proton kinetic energy as a tool for capturing structural transition in nanoconfined H${}_2$O
• Sensing phase-transitions via nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond
• Robust two-dimensional ice on graphene built from finite-length water molecular chains
• Ferroaxial order of the monolayer ice in martyite
• Assessing existent possibility of 2D materials through a simple mechanical model
• Ice on curved surfaces: defect rings and differential local dynamics