4:00 pm, Thursday, March 30, 2023 @Science Building, room 106
Time change: This lecture will
start at 4:15
What happens when Earth's most common liquid--water--
comes
into contact with a metal surface? Dr. Bhattarai has
studied this fundamental system using molecular dynamics to
simulate the interactions between metals and water molecules
near the interface.
The embedded atom method, EAM, has been widely used. But it models the valence charge density of atoms as static, whereas metal atoms are easily polarized in a modest electric field.
Dr. Bhattarai has modified the EAM approach to allow the charge densities of the metal atoms to readjust themselves in response to the highly polar water molecules nearby.
Using this revised "density readjusting EAM" (DR-EAM), he has studied the ordering of the water molecules, and thermal conductance near a gold (111) -water interface, and will share his findings.
Dr. Hemanta Bhattarai is a condensed matter physicist with a research appointment at the Pennsylvania State University. He did his doctoral research at the University of Notre Dame.
Figure from doi:10.1021/acs.chemrev.1c00679
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Contact: Paul Meyer Reimer, phone 7318, email paulmr@goshen.edu
See also: Goshen College Physics Department