{"id":985,"date":"2018-06-22T13:43:26","date_gmt":"2018-06-22T12:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mub.eps.manchester.ac.uk\/in-abstract\/?p=985"},"modified":"2018-09-03T11:42:07","modified_gmt":"2018-09-03T10:42:07","slug":"anomalously-low-dielectric-constant-of-confined-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mub.eps.manchester.ac.uk\/in-abstract\/anomalously-low-dielectric-constant-of-confined-water\/","title":{"rendered":"Anomalously low dielectric constant of confined water"},"content":{"rendered":"

Water found to be electrically dead at surfaces<\/strong><\/p>\n

Water has many anomalous properties that make it a unique substance and the fundamental element for life. When it is near a surface, water has long been predicted to exhibit a reduced electric polarisability but the size of the effect remained unknown. Now, researchers at The University of Manchester and their international collaborators have finally succeeded in measuring this property by combining two recently developed technologies. First, they created special nanochannels of only a few nanometres in size and accommodated only few layers of water in them by assembling atomically flat crystals of graphite and hexagonal boron nitride. Second, they introduced a scanning probe microscopy technique capable of probing the dielectric constant of water inside the nanochannels. They found that the rotational polarisability of the trapped water is not only suppressed, but completely absent. In other words, the water is electrically dead. This is in contrast to bulk water, known for its anomalously high dielectric constant (around 80), which easily aligns along an electric field. The thickness of the dead layer was found to be less than one nanometre thick – which is only two to three molecules. This new anomaly has important implications in many scientific disciplines. In particular, it will improve our understanding of the structure and energetics of electrochemical systems and biological macromolecules such as proteins and nucleic acids.<\/p>\n

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