Water orientation at hydrophobic interfaces

Abstract

We study the structure and orientation of water molecules at water/alkane and water/polydimethylsiloxane interfaces with surface specific intensity and heterodyne-detected vibrational sum-frequency generation (HD-VSFG) spectroscopy. We observe that the hydrogen-bond structure of the water molecules is enhanced at these interfaces compared to the water/air interface. We also find that the water molecules at the interface show a net orientation of their O-H groups pointing towards to the hydrophobic layer.