Introduction

Water is perhaps the most important chemical substance known. Without it, the very existence of life would be questionable. Yet its detailed structure and behaviour in the condensed phase and the interfaces between the condensed phase and its environment remain somewhat controversial:

• Recent X-ray absorption studies on liquid water have been interpreted in terms of rings and chains of water molecules that other techniques, both theoretical and empirical, have failed to observe
• The structure of water layers at metal surfaces remains a topic of considerable debate since high quality quantum chemical calculations indicated a mixed water/hydroxyl layer could be used to interpret structural observations on ice layers on ruthenium while spectroscopic observations provided no evidence for such a mixed adlayer
• While the gas phase water cluster community has provided detailed experimental and theoretical pictures of the behaviour of small water clusters, the problem remains that none of the existing interaction potentials for water can adequately describe its phase and interface behaviour fully.     

Indeed as ever more sophisticated and novel experimental and theoretical tools are applied to the study of bulk liquid water and ice and its interfaces, it is becoming increasingly clear that this disparate information could heat the debate on the phase and interface behaviour of water rather than cool it!

Aims

Faraday Discussion 141, organised by the Faraday Division, plans to achieve a unification of views towards the goal of understanding the microscopic structure and behaviour of condensed phases of water at interfaces and progressing into the bulk.

Who should attend?

The meeting aims to draw together experimental and theoretical scientists from diverse disciplines that traditionally do not interact; the gas phase clusters community, the surface science community and the condensed (liquid) phase community.

Scientific Committee

Professor Martin McCoustra 
Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK (chair)

Professor Victoria Buch 
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Professor Jean-Pierre Hansen
University of Cambridge, UK

Professor John Finney 
University College London, UK

Professor Colin Bain
University of Durham, UK

Dr Georg Held 
University of Reading, UK

Professor Andrea Russell
University of Southampton, UK

Dr Richard Wheatley
University of Nottingham, UK

Co-sponsor

We would like to thank the Surface Science Division of the AVS for their co-sponsorship support of this Faraday Discussion.

Members of the AVS are eligible to attend at RSC member rate.

Sponsor

We are grateful to the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), the TFSG (Thin Films and Surfaces group at the IOP) and CCP3 (Collaborative Computational Project 3 - Surface Science) for their generous sponsorship support of the conference.