Hydrogen Bond Energies in Formation of Water Molecule Clusters

Abstract

During the last decades, the interest in water structure has increased as an important theoretical and practical problem, connected with different industrial and biological applications. Theoretically, the mechanisms of water molecules cluster formation have been of special interest. It has been assumed that aggregation of water molecules depends on the energy of hydrogen bonds. The character of this process was investigated in the present study. The approach was based on measurements of the wetting angle θ of water droplets at different energy levels during their evaporation. Taking into account previous findings that θ depends on the average energy of hydrogen bonds between water molecules, it was assumed that the size of water clusters is related to the value of θ, measured at different energy levels. This assumption was confirmed by the obtained experimental results.