Water coordination structures and the excess free energy of the liquid

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the excess free energy of liquid water by decomposing it into packing, outer-shell, and local chemical contributions, highlighting the importance of coordination states and the incremental role of water molecules.

Contribution

It introduces a molecular aufbau approach to quantify how each water molecule within the coordination sphere influences the excess chemical potential of a water molecule.

Findings

Four water molecules fully account for the chemical term.

The first added water contributes nearly half of the chemical interaction.

Coordination sphere occupancy and interactions are key to understanding water's structure.

Abstract

For a distinguished water molecule, the solute water, we assess the contribution of each coordination state to its excess chemical potential, using a molecular aufbau approach. In this approach, we define a coordination sphere, the inner-shell, and separate the excess chemical potential into packing, outer-shell, and local chemical contributions; the coordination state is defined by the number of solvent water molecules within the coordination sphere. The packing term accounts for the free energy of creating a solute-free coordination sphere in the liquid. The outer-shell term accounts for the interaction of the solute with the fluid outside the coordination sphere and it is accurately described by a Gaussian model of hydration for coordination radii greater than the minimum of the oxygen-oxygen pair correlation function. Consistent with the conventional radial cut-off used for defining hydrogen-bonds in liquid water, theory helps identify a chemically meaningful coordination radius. The local chemical contribution is recast as a sum over coordination states. The n-th term in this sum is given by the probability of observing n water molecules inside the coordination sphere in the absence of the solute water times a factor accounting for the interaction of the solute with the inner-shell solvent water molecules. Using this molecular aufbau expansion, we monitor the change in the chemical contribution due to the incremental increase in n. We find that though four water molecules are needed to fully account for the chemical term, the first added water accounts for nearly half the chemical term. Our results emphasize the need to acknowledge the intrinsic occupancy of a solute-free coordination sphere together with solute-solvent interactions in rationalizing the tetrahedral coordination of the solute water.