Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Water Nanodroplets on Silica Surfaces at High Air Pressures

Silicon dioxides-water systems are abundant in nature and play fundamental roles in a diversity of novel science and engineering applications. Although extensive research has been devoted to study the nature of the interaction between silica and water a complete understanding of the system has not been reached.

Contact angle measurements of droplets on solid surfaces offer useful quantitative measurements of the physiochemical properties of the solid-liquid interface. For hydrophobic systems the properties the solid- liquid interface are now known to be strongly influenced by the presence of air e.g., nanobubbles.

In the present work we study the role of air on the wetting of hydrophilic systems. We conduct molecular dynamics simulations of a water nanodroplet on an amorphous silica surface at different air pressures. The interaction potentials describing the silica, water, and air are obtained from the literature.

The silica surface is modeled by a large 32 ⨯ 32 ⨯ 2 nm amorphous SiO2 structure consisting of 180000 atoms. The water consists of 18000 water molecules surrounded by N2 and O2 air molecules corresponding to air pressures of 0 bar (vacuum), 50 bar, 100 bar and 200 bar. We perform extensive simulations of the water- air equilibrium and calibrate the water-air interaction to match the experimental solubility of N2 and O2 in water.

For the silica-water system we calibrate the water-silica interaction to match the experimental contact angle of 27º. We subsequently study the effect of air and find a consistent increase in the water contact angle reaching 53º at 200 bar air pressure. These results are important for the creation and stability of nanobubbles at hydrophilic interfaces.