Size-dependence of hydrophobic hydration at electrified gold/water interfaces

TL;DR

This study extends the LCW theory to describe size-dependent hydrophobic hydration at gold/water interfaces under applied potential, revealing how solute size influences free energy and adsorption behavior relevant to electrochemical reactions.

Contribution

It introduces an extended LCW model for interfacial hydrophobic hydration that accounts for solute size and applied voltage effects, predicting free energy costs at the gold/water interface.

Findings

Small hydrophobes favor outer-sphere adsorption at the gold surface.

Hydration free energy increases for larger hydrophobes above 2.5 Å radius.

Transition from volume to surface dominated hydration occurs at smaller sizes at the interface.

Abstract

Hydrophobic hydration at metal/water interfaces actively contributes to the energetics of electrochemical reactions, e.g. CO$_2$ and N$_2$ reduction, where small hydrophobic molecules are involved. In this work, constant applied potential molecular dynamics is employed to study hydrophobic hydration at a gold/water interface. We propose an extension of the Lum-Chandler-Weeks (LCW) theory to describe the free energy of hydrophobic hydration at the interface as a function of solute size and applied voltage. Based on this model we are able to predict the free energy cost of cavity formation at the interface directly from the free energy cost in the bulk plus an interface-dependent correction term. The interfacial water network contributes significantly to the free energy yielding a preference for outer-sphere adsorption at the gold surface for ideal hydrophobes. We predict an accumulation of small hydrophobic solutes of sizes comparable to CO or N$_2$, while the free energy cost to hydrate larger hydrophobes, above 2.5 Angstrom radius, is shown to be greater at the interface than in the bulk. Interestingly, the transition from the volume dominated to the surface dominated regimes predicted by the LCW theory in the bulk is also found to take place for hydrophobes at the Au/water interface, but occurs at smaller cavity radii. By applying the extended LCW theory to a simple model addition reaction, we illustrate some implications of our findings for electrochemical reactions.