A numerical model for water hydration on nanosurfaces: from friction to hydrophilicity and hydrophobicity

Abstract

Fluidic transport down to the nanometer scale is of great importance for a wide range of applications such as energy harvesting, seawater desalination, and water treatment and may help to understand many biological processes. In this work, we studied the interfacial friction of liquid water on a series of nanostructures through molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Our results reveal that the friction coefficient of the water–solid interface cannot be described using a previously reported simple function of the free energy corrugation. Considering that the water–solid friction is firmly correlated with the microscopic water motion, we proposed a probability parameter P(d, t) to classify water motion modes on a surface. We demonstrate that this parameter can be used to accurately predict the water–solid friction by simply monitoring the water binding time on a nanosurface. More importantly, according to the relationship between P(d, t) and friction, we found that the friction coefficient can be used as an indicative criterion for quantitatively assessing hydrophobic or hydrophilic materials, where the borderline is roughly 2 × 10⁵ N s m⁻³. That is if the water–solid friction is less than 2 × 10⁵ N s m⁻³, the surface is considered hydrophobic. But if the friction is larger than this value, the surface is hydrophilic. The present findings could help to better understand fluidic transport at the nanoscale and guide the future design of functional materials, such as super-hydrophobic and super-hydrophilic surfaces by structure engineering.