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Surface structure of water from soft X-ray second harmonic generation

Journal Article · · Nature Communications
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  1. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  2. University of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Advanced Light Source (ALS); Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV (United States)
  3. Theiss Research, La Jolla, CA (United States); National Inst. of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, MD (United States)
  4. University of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  5. Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV (United States)
  6. Univ. of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA (United States)
  7. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
The microscopic structure of water’s surface is crucial to many natural and industrial processes, but studying its hydrogen bond (H-bond) network directly remains challenging due to the required interfacial sensitivity of experimental techniques. By leveraging advances in flat liquid sheet microjets and terawatt-scale attosecond soft X-ray pulses from the LCLS X-ray free electron laser, we employed soft X-ray second harmonic generation (SXSHG) spectroscopy to examine the liquid water/vapor interface. SXSHG combines the elemental selectivity of X-ray spectroscopies with the surface selectivity of SHG and gives access to the electronic structure of interfacial species. Here, we show the SXSHG spectrum differs from bulk water’s X-ray absorption, with its peak shifted several eV, indicating a vastly different electronic environment at the interface as compared to the bulk. First-principles electronic structure calculations show the signal is highly sensitive to H-bond interactions, such as water molecules accepting a single H-bond, which are surface abundant.
Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); University of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division (MSE)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231; AC02-76SF00515; SC0023503; SC0024123
Other Award/Contract Number:
DMR190106
PHY210131
2138259
2138286
2138307
2137603
2138296
M21PL3263
DGE 1752814
OSTI ID:
3024436
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 3020295
Journal Information:
Nature Communications, Journal Name: Nature Communications Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 16; ISSN 2041-1723
Publisher:
Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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