Anomalously low friction of confined monolayer water with a quadrilateral structure

In this work, we explored how the structure of monolayer water confined between two graphene sheets is coupled to its dynamic behavior. Our molecular dynamics simulations show that there is a remarkable interrelation between the friction of confined water with two walls and its structure under extreme confinement. When the water molecules formed a regular quadrilateral structure, the friction coefficient is dramatically reduced. Such a low-friction coefficient can be attributed to the formation of long-range ordered hydrogen bond network, which not only decreases the structure corrugation in the direction perpendicular to the walls but also promotes the collective motion of the confined water. The regular quadrilateral structure can be formed only if the number density of confined water falls within a certain range. Higher number density results in larger structure corrugations, which increases the friction, while smaller number density leads to an irregular hydrogen bond network in which the collective motion cannot play the role. We demonstrated that there are four distinct stages in the diagram of the friction coefficient vs the number density of confined water. This research clearly established the connection between the dynamic characteristics of confined monolayer water and its structure, which is beneficial to further understand the mechanism of the high-speed water flow through graphene nanocapillaries observed in recent experiments.