Water at patterned hydrophilic/hydrophobic surfaces

水与表面的相互作用在许多具有重要技术意义的界面上起着关键作用，无论是作为活性物质还是通过改变其他吸附剂的稳定性。在受限环境中结合的水具有非常独特和潜在有用的特性，例如碳纳米管和氧化石墨烯分子筛中一维链的无摩擦传输，而特定表面成核冰的能力在大气降水和生物界面的冰形成（抑制）等多种领域发挥着重要作用。许多这些表面是复杂的，例如，冰形成蛋白质通常显示亲水和疏水结合位点的规则线性阵列，具有较大的波纹，但为什么它们的结构具有如此独特的成核或抑制冰形成的能力尚不清楚。该项目将使用表面科学技术和电子结构计算来检查含有亲疏水点阵列的界面上的水吸附和排序，这些界面由无机和有机物质构成。我们将试图建立一个分子图来描述疏水/亲水位点的波纹和横向顺序如何影响润湿。该项目的最终目标是设计一个模型表面来模拟冰形成蛋白质，并在分子水平上了解它与水的界面，以揭示它如何克服冰形成的大临界核尺寸。学生将接受特高压扫描探针显微镜（STM和AFM）的培训，并使用现代电子结构计算和范德华校正来模拟水的吸附

The interaction of water with surfaces plays a key role at many interfaces of technological importance, either as the active species or by modifying the stability of other adsorbates. Water bound in confined environments has quite unique and potentially useful properties, for example frictionless transport of 1D chains in carbon nanotubes and molecular sieves of graphene oxide, while the ability of particular surfaces to nucleate ice plays an important role in areas as diverse as atmospheric precipitation and ice formation (inhibition) at biological interfaces. Many of these surfaces are complex, For example, ice forming proteins typically display regular linear arrays of hydrophilic and hydrophobic binding sites, with a large corrugation, but why their structure has such a unique ability to nucleate or inhibit ice formation remains unclear. This project will use surface science techniques and electronic structure calculations to examine water adsorption and ordering at interfaces containing arrays of hydrophilic/hydrophobic sites, built from both inorganic and organic species. We will seek to develop a molecular picture to describe how the corrugation and lateral ordering of the hydrophobic/hydrophilic sites influences wetting. The ultimate aim of this project will be to design a model surface to mimic an ice forming protein and understand its interface with water at the molecular level to reveal how it overcomes the large critical nucleus size for ice formation. The student will receive training in UHV scanning probe microscopy (STM and AFM) and the use of modern electronic structure calculations, with van der Waals corrections, to model water adsorption