Comment on “investigation of dielectric constants of water in a nano-confined pore” by H. Zhu, F. Yang, Y. Zhu, A. Li, W. He, J. Huang and G. Li, RSC Adv., 2020, 10, 8628

Abstract

Zhu et al. recently reported the spatially resolved dielectric profile and value of the average static dielectric constant of water confined inside a silica nanopore. However, the authors neglected the inherent anisotropy and non-local nature of the dielectric response under confinement. Neglect of these important issues produces erroneous results and vastly underestimates the average values. We demonstrate the correct way to incorporate the anisotropy and to obtain the average dielectric constant of cylindrically nanoconfined dipolar fluids. Use of the correct theoretical formalism expectedly shows convergence of the calculated dielectric response to the bulk value with increasing the nanopore size. On the contrary, the equation used by Zhu et al. fails to exhibit the convergence of the same. Instead, decreases as the nanopore size is gradually increased.