The Surface Potential of the Water-Vapor Interface from Classical Simulations

The electrochemical surface potential across the water-vapor interface provides a measure of the orientation of water molecules at the interface. However, the large discrepancies between surface potentials calculated from ab initio (AI) and classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations indicate that what is being calculated may be relevant to different test probes. Although a method for extracting the electrochemical surface potential from AIMD simulations has been given, methods for MD simulations have not been clarified. Here, two methods for extracting the surface potential relevant to electrochemical measurements from MD simulations are presented. This potential is shown to be almost entirely due to the dipole contribution. In addition, the molecular origin of the dipole contribution is explored by using different potential energy functions for water. The results here show that the dipole contribution arises mainly from distortions in the hydration shell of the full hydrogen bonded waters on the liquid side of the interface, which is determined by the charge distribution of the water model. Disturbingly, the potential varies by 0.4 eV depending on the model. Although there is still no consensus on what that charge distribution should be, recent results indicate that it contains both a large quadrupole and negative charge out of the molecular plane, i.e., three-dimensional (3D) charge. Water models with 3D charge give the least distortion of the hydration shell and the best agreement with experimental surface potentials, although there is still uncertainty in the experimental values.