Modeling of Self-Assembly of Water Nanostructures

Abstract

A specific feature of regular water nanostructures, as well as extended ice, is residual entropy. The number of configurations with different arrangement of hydrogen atoms (protons) is immense. Of prime interest are the most stable proton configurations. The properties of the most unfavorable configurations of water clusters and other ice-like systems are generally beyond the attention of researchers. In this paper we present the results of studying the most weakly bound proton configurations of water nanostructures. The highly unusual spontaneous structural transformations of some weakly bound configurations are enumerated. Rather unexpectedly, one of these transformations demonstrated a pronounced ability of cubic water clusters to self-organization. The results of studying the processes of self-organization of water nanostructures from these clusters are presented. Similar behavior of the simplest system of cubic water clusters and very complex biopolymers is indicated; this similarity covers the high-level self-organization, specific type of molecular asymmetry, self-assembly of one-dimensional aperiodic crystals, and the letter code.