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Updated: Apr 30, 2026

Probing the Structure and Dynamics of Interfacial Water with Scanning Tunneling Microscopy and Spectroscopy
Published on: May 27, 2018
Structure and dynamics of TIP3P, TIP4P, and TIP5P water near smooth and atomistic walls of different hydroaffinity
Michael F Harrach1, Barbara Drossel1
1Institut für Festkörperphysik, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Hochschulstr. 6, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany.
Abstract:
We perform molecular dynamics simulations to observe the structure and dynamics of water using different water models (TIP3P, TIP4P, TIP5P) at ambient conditions, constrained by planar walls, which are either modeled by smooth potentials or regular atomic lattices, imitating the honeycomb-structure of graphene. We implement walls of different hydroaffinity, different lattice constant, and different types of interaction with the water molecules. We find that in the hydrophobic regime the smooth wall generally represents a good abstraction of the atomically rough walls, while in the hydrophilic regime there are noticeable differences in structure and dynamics between all stages of wall roughness. For a small lattice constant however the smooth and the atomically rough wall still share a number of structural and dynamical similarities. Out of the three water models, TIP5P water shows the largest degree of tetrahedral ordering and is often the one that is least perturbed by the presence of the wall.
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