The physical origin of hydrophobic effects
Authors: Qiang Sun
Abstract: The strength of hydrogen bonding in water is stronger than that of van der waals interaction, therefore water may play an important role in the process of hydrophobic effects. When a hydrophobic solute is dissolved into water, an interface appears between the solute and water. To understand the mechanism of hydrophobic effects, it is necessary to study the structure of water and solute/water interface. In this study, based on the structural studies on water and air/water interface, the hydration free energy is derived, and utilized to investigate the physical origin of hydrophobic effects. According to the discussion on hydration free energy, with increasing solute size, it can be divided into the initial and hydrophobic solvation processes, respectively. In the initial solvation process, hydration free energy is dominated by the hydrogen bonding in interfacial water (topmost water layer at the solute/water interface). However, in the hydrophobic solvation process, the hydration free energy is related to hydrogen bondings of both bulk water and interfacial water. Additionally, various dissolved behaviors of solutes can be expected for different solvation processes. From this, hydrophobic effects can be ascribed to the competition between the hydrogen bondings in bulk water and those in interfacial water.
Tools for this paper
Ask questions about this paper to our AI assistant
You can also chat with multiple papers at once here.
⚠The license of the paper does not allow us to build upon its content and the AI assistant only knows about the paper metadata rather than the full article.
The previous summary was created more than a year ago and can be re-run (if necessary) by clicking on the Run button below.
⚠The license of this specific paper does not allow us to build upon its content and the summarizing tools will be run using the paper metadata rather than the full article. However, it still does a good job, and you can also try our tools on papers with more open licenses.
Look for similar papers (in beta version)
We compare the title and abstract with papers indexed in our database. For arXiv papers, we search within the same category; for DOI and other sources, we search across sources and subjects. You can rerun the search as our database grows.
Disclaimer: The AI-based summarization tool and virtual assistant provided on this website may not always provide accurate and complete summaries or responses. We encourage you to carefully review and evaluate the generated content to ensure its quality and relevance to your needs.