{"id":219737,"date":"2025-08-09T05:31:21","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T10:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/surfaces-not-confinement-rule-until-the-thinnest-limits"},"modified":"2025-08-09T05:31:21","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T10:31:21","slug":"surfaces-not-confinement-rule-until-the-thinnest-limits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/surfaces-not-confinement-rule-until-the-thinnest-limits","title":{"rendered":"Surfaces, not confinement, rule until the thinnest limits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/surfaces-not-confinement-rule-until-the-thinnest-limits3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research have upended assumptions about how water behaves when squeezed into atom-scale spaces. By applying spectroscopic tools together with the machine learning simulation technique to water confined in a space of only a few molecules thick, the team, led by Mischa Bonn, found that water\u2019s structure remains strikingly \u201cnormal\u201d until confined to below a nanometer, far thinner than previously believed.<\/p>\n<p>The research, \u201cInterfaces Govern the Structure of Angstrom-Scale Confined Water Solutions,\u201d was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-025-62625-w\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in Nature Communications.<\/p>\n<p>Peering into the structure of a layer of water molecules that is only a few molecules thick is a formidable scientific challenge. The team fabricated a nanoscale capillary device by trapping water between a single layer of graphene and a calcium fluoride (CaF\u2082) substrate. They then wielded cutting-edge vibrational surface-specific spectroscopy\u2014capable of detecting the microscopic structure of confined water, including the orientation and hydrogen-bonding of water molecules\u2014to \u201csee\u201d the elusive few layers of water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research have upended assumptions about how water behaves when squeezed into atom-scale spaces. By applying spectroscopic tools together with the machine learning simulation technique to water confined in a space of only a few molecules thick, the team, led by Mischa Bonn, found that water\u2019s structure remains [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,48,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nanotechnology","category-particle-physics","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}