The Structure of Liquid Water by Neutron Scattering

Abstract

A comprehensive analysis of the structure of liquid water was performed by combining neutron and X-ray diffraction data. A formula expressing the structure factor of fluids composed of small molecular clusters was obtained and applied to the analysis. In the interpretation of the diffraction data, the tetrahedral pentamer model as an aggregate of the regular tetrahedral pen tamers is considered to be the best structure model of liquid water from the excellent agreement between calculated structure factors and experimental data. Some critical discussions about other structure models were made.