Structure of water in microscopic fractures of a silver iodide crystal

Abstract

The results of a computer simulation of flat fractures with widths of 0.63, 1.25, and 2.5 nm filled with vapor molecules in a silver iodide crystals at 260 K were presented. The two-dimensional gas of molecules adsorbed on the walls was found to be strongly clustered. Before the pore was filled, its walls had been covered with a monomolecular water film with a characteristic hexagonal structure. The perpendicular growth of the film was hindered by the hydrophobicity of its surface; the adsorbed molecules were bonded with the walls by interactions with the ions of the second crystal layer to form a specific orientational molecular order in the region of contact with the wall. On the wall with silver cations, the molecular energy was lower and the entropy higher than on the wall with iodide anions; on the wall with a lower energy, the adsorption started earlier and was more active. In an extremely narrow pore having room for only one molecular layer, the monomolecular film consists of spots held on opposite walls; in each spot, the orientational molecular order is the one characteristic of the wall with which the spot is in contact.