(166a) Water Structure on Mica Surfaces: Synergistic Insights from Experiments and Molecular Simulations | AIChE

(166a) Water Structure on Mica Surfaces: Synergistic Insights from Experiments and Molecular Simulations

Authors 

Sarupria, S. - Presenter, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Zhou, J., Clemson University
Lata, N. N., Michigan Technological University
Glatz, B., Clemson University
Cantrell, W., Michigan Technological University
Water structure on mineral surfaces is of relevance to various phenomena such as atmospheric ice nucleation, catalysis at mineral surfaces and use of minerals for containing nuclear waste. In all these applications the interaction of water with the mineral surface plays a critical role in governing the surface phenomena. In our work, we study the interaction of water with mica surfaces using a suite of experimental and simulation techniques. Our goal is to use these insights into understanding the ice nucleation behavior on mica surfaces. We study the effect of the cations on the mica surface. To this end, we perform MD simulations, DFT calculations, FTIR experiments and SFG experiments to gain insights into the surface-water interactions. From our studies, we find an interplay between the surface-water, surface-cation and cation-water that governs the molecular structure of water and the cations on the surface. We will discuss these results in our talk.