Filled and empty states of carbon nanotubes in water: Dependence on nanotube diameter, wall thickness and dispersion interactions |
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Authors: | Malay Rana and Amalendu Chandra |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, 208 016, India |
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Abstract: | We have carried out a series of molecular dynamics simulations of water containing a narrow carbon nanotube as a solute to
investigate the filling and emptying of the nanotube and also the modifications of the density and hydrogen bond distributions
of water inside and also in the vicinity of the outer surfaces of the nanotube. Our primary goal is to look at the effects
of varying nanotube diameter, wall thickness and also solute-solvent interactions on the solvent structure in the confined
region also near the outer surfaces of the solute. The thickness of the walls is varied by considering single and multi-walled
nanotubes and the interaction potential is varied by tuning the attractive strength of the 12–6 pair interaction potential
between a carbon atom of the nanotubes and a water molecule. The calculations are done for many different values of the tuning
parameter ranging from fully Lennard-Jones to pure repulsive pair interactions. It is found that both the solvation characteristics
and hydrogen bond distributions can depend rather strongly on the strength of the attractive part of the solute-water interaction
potential. The thickness of the nanotube wall, however, is found to have only minor effects on the density profiles, hydrogen
bond network and the wetting characteristics. This indicates that the long range electrostatic interactions between water
molecules inside and on the outer side of the nanotube do not make any significant contribution to the overall solvation structure
of these hydrophobic solutes. The solvation characteristics are primarily determined by the balance between the loss of energy
due to hydrogen bond network disruption, cavity repulsion potential and offset of the same by attractive component of the
solute-water interactions. Our studies with different system sizes show that the essential features of wetting and dewetting
characteristics of narrow nanotubes for different diameter and interaction potentials are also present in relatively smaller
systems consisting of about five hundred molecules.
We dedicate this work to Professor Debashis Mukherjee on his 60th Birthday. |
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Keywords: | Hydrophobic hydration hydrogen bonds dispersion interactions carbon nanotubes |
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