Vie de l'Institut - Institut de minéralogie et de physique des milieux condensés

Amphiteatre, Bâtiment 10
Campus Boucicaut, 140 rue de Lourmel, 75015 Paris

Liquid Water, the ``Most Complex'' Liquid: New Results in Nanoconfined and Biological Environments

 
Prof. H. Eugene Stanley (Departments of Physics and Chemistry, Boston Univ., Boston, MA 02215 USA)

 
We will introduce some of the 64 anomalies of the most complex of liquids, water---focusing on recent progress in understanding these anomalies by combining information provided by recent experiments and simulations on water in bulk, nanoconfined [1,2] and biological [3]environments. We will interpret evidence from recent experiments designed to test the hypothesis that liquid water may display ``polymorphism'' in that it can exist in two different phases---and discuss recent work on nanoconfined water anomalies [1,2] as well as therelated, and highly unusual, behavior of water in biological environments [3]. Finally, we will discuss how the general concept of liquid polymorphism [4] is proving useful in understanding anomalies in other liquids, such as silicon, silica, and carbon, as well as metallic glasses, which have in common that they are characterized by two characteristic length scales in their interactions.

[1] S. Han, M. Y. Choi, P. Kumar, and H. E. Stanley, ``Phase Transitions in Confined Water Nanofilms,'' Nature Physics {\bf 6}, 685--689 (2010).
[2] L. Xu, F. Mallamace, Z. Yan, F. W. Starr, S. V. Buldyrev, and H. E. Stanley, ``Appearance of a Fractional Stokes-Einstein Relation in Water and a Structural Interpretation of Its Onset,'' Nature Physics 5, 565--569 (2009).
[3] P. Kumar, Z. Yan, L. Xu, M. G. Mazza, S. V. Buldyrev, S. -H. Chen. S. Sastry, and H. E. Stanley, "Glass Transition in Biomolecules and the Liquid-Liquid Critical Point of Water," Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 177802 (2006).
[4] H. E. Stanley, ed. , Liquid Polymorphism [Advances in Chemical Physics, series editor S. A. Rice] (Wiley, NY, 2011).