Radiation emission by electrons channeling in bent silicon crystals

The hydrogen bond network is responsible for the exceptional physical and chemical properties of water, however, the description of hydrogen bond remains a challenge for the studies of condensed water. The investigation of structural and binding properties of water clusters provides a key for understanding the H-bonds in bulk water. In this paper, a new set of geometric parameters are defined to describe the extent of the overlap between the bonding orbital of the donor OH and the nonbonding orbital of the lone-pair of the acceptor molecule. This orbital overlap plays a dominant role for the strength of H-bonds. The dependences of the binding energy of the water dimer on these parameters are studied. The results show that these parameters properly describe the H-bond strength. The ring, book, cage and prism isomers of water hexamer form 6, 7, 8 and 9 H-bonds, and the strength of the bonding in these isomers changes markedly. The internally-solvated and the all-surface structures of (H₂O) _n for n = 17, 19 and 21 are nearly isoenergetic. The internally-solvated isomers form fewer but stronger H-bonds. The hydrogen bonding in the above clusters are investigated in detail. The geometric parameters can well describe the characters of the H-bonds, and they correlate well with the H-bond strength. For the structures forming stronger H-bonds, the H-bond lengths are shorter, the angle parameters are closer to the optimum values, and their rms deviations are smaller. The H-bonds emanating from DDAA and DDA molecules as H-donor are relatively weak. The vibrational spectra of (H₂O) _n (n = 17, 19 and 21) are studied as well. The stretching vibration of the intramolecular OH bond is sensitive to its bonding environment. The H-bond strength judged from the geometric parameters is in good agreement with the bonding strength judged from the stretching frequencies.