Structure and Dynamics of Water/Methanol Mixtures at Hydroxylated Silica Interfaces Relevant to Chromatography

Prashant Kumar Gupta, Markus Meuwly

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

The spectroscopy and dynamics of water/methanol (MeOH) mixtures at hydroxylated silica surfaces is investigated from atomistic simulations. The particular focus is on how the structural dynamics of MeOH changes when comparing surface-bound and MeOH in the bulk. From analyzing the frequency frequency correlation functions it is found that the dynamics on the picosecond time scale differs by almost a factor of two. While the relaxation time is 2.0 ps for MeOH in the bulk solvent it is considerably slowed-down to 3.5 ps for surface-bound MeOH. Surface-adsorbed MeOH molecules reside there for several nanoseconds and their H-bonds are strongly oriented towards the surface-OH groups. These results are of particular relevance for chromatographic systems where the solvent may play a central role in their function. The present simulations suggest that surface-sensitive spectroscopic techniques should be useful in better characterizing such heterogeneous systems and provide detailed insight into solvent dynamics and structure relevant in chromatographic applications.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2938-2944
Number of pages7
JournalChemPhysChem
DOIs
StatePublished - 19 Sep 2016
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

Keywords

  • chromatography
  • infrared spectroscopy
  • molecular dynamics
  • silica
  • two-dimensional spectroscopy

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