Adsorption at Nanoconfined Solid-Water Interfaces

TL;DR

This review explores how nanoconfinement at solid-water interfaces significantly alters water behavior and adsorption processes, impacting environmental and industrial applications, and highlights recent experimental and theoretical advances in this field.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of recent progress in understanding adsorption at nanoconfined solid-water interfaces, emphasizing the effects of nanoconfinement on water properties and reactivity.

Findings

Nanoconfinement changes water structure and dynamics.

Altered energetics and pathways of adsorption.

Implications for environmental and industrial processes.

Abstract

Reactions at solid-water interfaces play a foundational role in water treatment systems, catalysis, chemical separations, and in predicting chemical fate and transport in the environment. Over the last century, experimental measurements and computational models have made tremendous progress in capturing reactions at solid surfaces. The interfacial reactivity of a solid surface, however, can change dramatically and unexpectedly when it is confined to the nanoscale. Nanoconfinement can arise in different geometries such as pores/cages (3-D confinement), channels (2-D confinement) and slits (1-D confinement). Therefore, measurements on unconfined surfaces, and molecular models parameterized based on these measurements, fail to capture chemical behaviors under nanoconfinement. This review evaluates recent experimental and theoretical advances, with a focus on adsorption at solid-water interfaces. We review how nanoconfinement alters the physico-chemical properties of water, and how the structure and dynamics of nanoconfined water dictate energetics, pathways, and products of adsorption in nanopores. The implications of these findings and future research directions are discussed.