Water structure, properties and some applications – A review
Georgios M. Kontogeorgis, Andrew Holster, Nomiki Kottaki, Evangelos Tsochantaris, Frederik Topsøe, Jesper Naimi Funch Poulsen, Michael Bache, Xiaodong Liang, Nikolaj Blom, Johan Kronholm
Abstract
Water is a fascinating substance with lots of properties not encountered in other compounds. It has been suggested that making use of water's “anomalous” properties can lead to exciting applications in various disciplines e.g. engineering, medicine and physiology. The origin of these anomalous properties is far from clear, with the strong hydrogen bonds of water being only part of the answer. Moreover, water's structure and dynamics are not entirely understood either and new theories have appeared and debated during the 21st century. This review, aiming at a broader/general audience, attempts to review briefly some research trends related to water's structure, properties and applications. New experimental results for the debated phenomena of water bridge and exclusion zone are also presented and discussed. Various explanatory mechanisms for the exclusion zone are reviewed and a new proposal is put forward. A –hopefully- unbiased discussion is presented for both “mainstream” and unconventional theories and trends and future directions are also outlined.