Ordered Water Monolayer on Ultra-Smooth Hydroxylated Amorphous SiO^d2

Published

October 12, 2021

Author(s)

I M. Aarts, A C. Pipino, J P. Hoefnagels, W M. Kessels, M C. van de Sanden

Abstract

Polarized near-IR evanescent wave absorption spectra reveal the structure of awater monolayer bound to an ultra-smooth hydroxylated amorphous SiO2 surfaceunder equilibrium conditions. Employing a variant of cavity ring-downspectroscopy, combination spectra involving the first OH-stretching overtonewith the in-plane OH-bending mode were obtained in the 8300 cm-1 region forspecies on the total-internal- reflection surface of a miniature high-Q opticalresonator fabricated from ultra-low-bulk-OH amorphous SiO2. Highly polarized(>10:1), sharp ( 10 cm-1) spectral features having peak absorptions of 2 10-6 are observed for surface hydroxyl and adsorbed water species, where the lattersaturate at low relative humidity. Our results suggest the formation of an ice-like monolayer at room temperature on a quasi-crystalline surface.

Citation

Physical Review Letters

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

absorption, cavity, high-Q, resonator, ring-down, silanol, surface hydroxyl, water

Citation

Aarts, I. , Pipino, A. , Hoefnagels, J. , Kessels, W. and van de Sanden, M. (2021), Ordered Water Monolayer on Ultra-Smooth Hydroxylated Amorphous SiO^d2, Physical Review Letters (Accessed October 8, 2025)