A molecular perspective of water at metal interfaces

TL;DR

This review discusses recent advances in understanding the molecular structures and binding behaviors of water at metal interfaces, highlighting new physical insights and remaining challenges.

Contribution

It synthesizes recent research on water-metal interfaces, emphasizing molecular-level structures and concepts that advance fundamental understanding.

Findings

Diverse water structures form at metal interfaces.

New physical insights into water binding mechanisms.

Identification of open challenges in the field.

Abstract

Water/solid interfaces are relevant to a broad range of physicochemical phenomena and technological processes such as corrosion, lubrication, heterogeneous catalysis and electrochemistry. Although many fields have contributed to rapid progress in the fundamental knowledge of water at interfaces, detailed molecular-level understanding of water/solid interfaces comes mainly from studies on flat metal substrates. These studies have recently shown that a remarkably rich variety of structures form at the interface between water and even seemingly simple flat surfaces. In this Review we discuss the most exciting work in this area, in particular the emerging physical insight and general concepts about how water binds to metal surfaces. We also provide a perspective on outstanding problems, challenges and open questions.