Vibrational Spectroscopy of Water Interfaces

The second order nonlinear optical processes of second harmonic generation and sum frequency generation are powerful and versatile tools for studying all kinds of surfaces. They possess unusual surface sensitivity due to the symmetry properties of the second order nonlinear susceptibility. The technique of infrared-visible sum frequency generation (SFG) is particularly attractive because it offers a viable way to do vibrational spectroscopy on any surfaces accessible to light with submonolayer sensitivity. In this thesis, we applied SFG to study a number of important water interfaces. At the air/water interface, hydrophobic solid/water and liquid/water interfaces, it was found that approximately 25% of surface water molecules have one of their hydrogen pointing away from the liquid water. The large number of unsatisfied hydrogen bonds contributes significantly to the large interfacial energy of the hydrophobic surfaces. At the hydrophilic fused quartz/water interface and a fatty acid monolayer covered water surface, the structure and orientation of surface water molecules are controlled by the hydrogen bonding of water molecules with the surface OH groups and the electrostatic interaction with the surface field from the ionization of surface groups. A change of pH value in the bulk water can significantly change the relative importance of the two interactions and cause a drastic change in orientation of the surface water molecules. SFG has also been applied to study the tribological response of some model lubricant films. Monolayers of Langmuir -Blodgett films were found to disorder orientationally under mildly high pressure and recover promptly upon removal of the applied pressure.