Abstract
The understanding of water dewetting in nanoporous materials is of great importance in various fields of science and technology. Herein, we report molecular dynamics simulation results of dewetting of water droplet in hydrophobic nanocavities between graphene walls under the influence of electric field. At ambient temperature, the rate of dewetting induced by electric field is significantly large. Whereas, it is a very low rate of dewetting induced by high temperature (423 K) due to the strong interaction of the hydrogen-bonding networks of water droplets in nanocavities. In addition, the electric filed induced formation of a water column has been found in a vacuum chamber. When the electric field is turned off, the water column will transform into a water droplet. Importantly, the results demonstrate that the rate of electric field-induced dewetting increases with growth of the electric field. Overall, our results suggest that electric field may have a great potential application for nanomaterial dewetting.
Highlights
In spite of the hydrophobic nature of nonpolar nanocavities, water can be adsorbed inside these hydrophobic nanopores without the application of a high-pressure [1,2,3,4]
The dewetting transition phenomenon in-between hydrophobic nanocavities immersed in aqueous solutions has been investigated extensively [20,21,22,23,24]
Li et al reported that the nitrogen molecules aggregate in the vicinity of the two hydrophobic plates and exclude water molecules when hydrophobic plates immersed in nitrogen aqueous solutions [25]
Summary
In spite of the hydrophobic nature of nonpolar nanocavities, water can be adsorbed inside these hydrophobic nanopores without the application of a high-pressure [1,2,3,4]. In this paper, systematical studies were performed on the electric-field-inducing dewetting of hydrophobic nanocavities between graphene walls exposed in atmosphere by means of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Rapid dewetting of water droplet in nanocavities is found to be induced by electric field at ambient temperature.
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