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    Emergence of Electric Fields at the Water-C12E6 Surfactant Interface

    Year: 2021

    Journal: J. Am. Chem. Soc., Volume 143, SEP 22, page 15103–15112

    Authors: Gera, Rahul; Bakker, Huib J.; Franklin-Mergarejo, Ricardo; Morzan, Uriel N.; Falciani, Gabriele; Bergamasco, Luca; Versluis, Jan; Sen, Indraneel; Dante, Silvia; Chiavazzo, Eliodoro; Hassanali, Ali A.

    Organizations: European Commission [828838]

    We study the properties of the interface of water and the surfactant hexaethylene glycol monododecyl ether (C12E6) with a combination of heterodyne-detected vibrational sum frequency generation (HD-VSFG), Kelvin-probe measurements, and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. We observe that the addition of the hydrogen-bonding surfactant C12E6, close to the critical micelle concentration (CMC), induces a drastic enhancement in the hydrogen bond strength of the water molecules close to the interface, as well as a flip in their net orientation. The mutual orientation of the water and C12E6 molecules leads to the emergence of a broad (similar to 3 nm) interface with a large electric field of similar to 1 V/nm, as evidenced by the Kelvin-probe measurements and MD simulations. Our findings may open the door for the design of novel electric-field-tuned catalytic and light-harvesting systems anchored at the water-surfactant-air interface.
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