New State of Water Molecules Discovered

When scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory squeezed a molecule of water, between hexagonal beryl crystals were compressed so tightly that the standard alignment of the molecule was offset. The resulting state of matter failed to follow many rules of physics. As a result, the molecule began tunnelling, or moving through barriers at the atomic level.

This means that the oxygen and hydrogen atoms of the water molecule are ‘delocalized’ and therefore simultaneously present in all six symmetrically equivalent positions in the channel at the same time. It’s one of those phenomena that only occur in quantum mechanics and has no parallel in our everyday experience.

The existence of the tunnelling state of water shown in ORNL’s study should help scientists better describe the thermodynamic properties and behaviour of water in highly confined environments such as water diffusion and transport in the channels of cell membranes, in carbon nanotubes and along grain boundaries and at mineral interfaces in a host of geological environments.

This discovery represents a new fundamental understanding of the behaviour of water and the way water utilizes energy. It’s also interesting to think that those water molecules in our aquamarine or emerald ring – blue and green varieties of beryl – is undergoing the same quantum tunnelling.

The neutron scattering and computational chemistry experiments showed that, in the tunnelling state, the water molecules are delocalized around a ring so that the water molecule assumes an unusual double top-like shape.

The average kinetic energy of the water protons directly obtained from the neutron experiment is a measure of their motion at almost absolute zero temperature and is about 30 percent less than it is in bulk liquid or solid water. This is in complete disagreement with accepted models based on the energies of its vibrational modes.

Co-authors of the paper, titled “Quantum Tunnelling of Water in Beryl: a New State of the Water Molecule,” were Timothy Prisk, Eugene Mamontov, Andrey Podlesnyak, George Ehlers and David Wesolowski of ORNL, George Reiter of the University of Houston and Andrew Seel of Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

Courtesy:https://www.ornl.gov/news/ornl-researchers-discover-new-state-water-molecule