FOR 1583:  Hydrogen-Bonded Liquids Subject to Interfaces of Various Hydroaffinities

• Subject Area: Chemistry ; Physics
• Term: from 2011 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 179546604

Hydrogen-bonded liquids exhibit a number of extraordinary properties, rendering them very interesting for basic- and application-oriented research. Well known examples are the anomalies of water, in particular, the density anomaly, which is essential for life.
Interfaces strongly affect the properties of liquids. For example, the fluidity of water in nanoscopic confinements depends on the hydroaffinity and size of the environment. The ability to control the behaviour of hydrogen-bonded liquids in restricted spaces plays an enormous role for the regulation of biological processes and for the miniaturisation in nanotechnology.
The Research Unit combines modern techniques of preparation, characterisation and modelling to analyse the interplay of structure, dynamics and phase behaviour of hydrogen-bonded liquids in confinements of different size, hydroaffinity and softness and for various external conditions, e.g., in a broad temperature range.
In general, the properties of a liquid in a confinement and in the bulk can differ because of the effects of interfaces and of finite size. The former result from specific interactions at the boundary surface, while the latter occur when the size of the confinement is comparable to structural and dynamical length scales of the system. To ascertain the relevance of these effects and to gain a fundamental understanding, we prepare mesoporous host materials with functionalised surfaces in the Research Unit.
Moreover, a large number of experimental and theoretical methods are combined to analyse the behaviours of the guest materials. Specifically, we use methods of scattering, spectroscopy, calorimetry and microscopy as well as approaches of simulation and modelling. In this way, we investigate structure and dynamics on a large variety of length- and time scales so as to, on the one hand, obtain fundamental insights into structure-dynamics relations on a microscopic level and, on the other hand, trace back macroscopic properties to molecular mechanisms.

• DFG Programme: Research Units

Projects

• Ab-initio molecular dynamics simulations and calculation of spectroscopic properties in hydrogen bonding liquids in geometric confinements (Applicant Sebastiani, Daniel )
• Central Project (Applicant Vogel, Michael )
• Chemically modified silica materials as model systems for the characterization of water-surface interactions (Applicant Buntkowsky, Gerd )
• Confinement effects on the conformation, dynamics and phase transitions of biomolecular systems (Applicant Winter, Roland )
• Investigation of the mechanism of orientation in lyotropic liquid crystalline phases (Applicant Thiele, Christina Marie )
• Molecular dynamics simulations of water mixtures in confinements (Applicants Drossel, Barbara ;  Vogel, Michael )
• NMR studies on the molecular dynamics of hydrogen bonded liquids in nanoscopic confinements (Applicant Vogel, Michael )
• Phasenverhalten binärer wässriger Flüssigkeiten in Ionenspurkanälen (Applicant Fujara, Franz )
• Synthesis and controlled surface functionalization of mesoporous silica materials and ion track etched nanochannels (Applicants Hess, Christian ;  Trautmann, Christina )
• Triplet State Solvation Dynamics of supercooled water-based binary liquids in hard and soft confinement (Applicant Blochowicz, Thomas )
• Water/polymer mixtures in hard and soft confinement (Applicant Stühn, Bernd )

• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Michael Vogel