Electric field induced structural changes of water confined between two graphene layers

Abstract

An external electric field changes the physical properties of polar-liquids due to the reorientation of their permanent dipoles. For example it should affect significantly the physical properties of water confined in a nanochannel. The latter effect is profoundly enhanced, if the field is applied along the nanochannel. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we predict that an in-plane electric field applied parallel to the channel polarizes water molecules which are confined between two graphene layers, resulting in distinct-ferroelectricity and electrical hysteresis. We found that electric fields alter the in-plane order of the hydrogen bonds: reversing the electric field does not restore the system to the non-polar initial state, instead a residual dipole moment remains in the system. Our study provides insights into the ferroelectric state of water when confined in nanochannels and shows how this can be tuned by an electric field.

References in corpus (5)

• Electric Field Effect in Atomically Thin Carbon Films
• Square ice in graphene nanocapillaries
• Commensurability Effects in Viscosity of Nanoconfined Water
• Ab initio molecular dynamics study of dissociation of water under an electric field
• Structural and configurational properties of nanoconfined monolayer ice from first principles

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Universal Machine Learning for the Response of Atomistic Systems to External Fields
• Fast water flow through graphene nanocapillaries: a continuum model approach involving the microscopic structure of confined water
• Double-layer ice from first principles
• Electronic, dielectric and optical properties of two dimensional and bulk ice: a multi-scale simulation study
• Structure and flow of low-dimensional water
• Two-dimensional non-linear hydrodynamics and nanofluidics