Water, a molecule essential for life, has unusual properties - known as anomalies - that define its behaviour. However, there are still many enigmas about the molecular mechanisms that would explain the anomalies that make the water molecule unique. Deciphering and reproducing this particular behaviour of water in different temperature ranges is still a major challenge for the scientific community.
Now, a study presents a new theoretical model capable of overcoming the limitations of previous methodologies to understand how water behaves in extreme conditions. The paper, featured on the cover of The Journal of Chemical Physics , is led by Giancarlo Franzese and Luis Enrique Coronas, from the Faculty of Physics and the Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology of the University of Barcelona (IN2UB).
The study not only broadens our understanding of the physics of water, but also has implications for technology, biology and biomedicine, in particular for addressing the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and the development of advanced biotechnologies.
The CVF model: better understanding the physics of wáter
The study, which results from the doctoral thesis that Luis E. Coronas presented in 2023 at the Faculty of Physics of the UB, shows a new theoretical model that responds to the acronym CVF (the initials of the surnames of the researchers Luis E. Coronas, Oriol Vilanova and Giancarlo Franzese). The new CVF model is reliable, efficient, scalable and transferable, and incorporates ab initio quantum calculations that accurately reproduce the thermodynamic properties of water under different conditions.
By applying the new theoretical framework, the study reveals that "there is a critical point between two liquid forms of water, and this critical point is the origin of the anomalies that make water unique and essential for life, as well as for many technological applications", says Professor Giancarlo Franzese, from the Statistical Physics Section of the Department of Condensed Matter Physics.
"Although this conclusion has already been reached in other water models, none of them have the specific characteristics of the model we have developed in this study", says Franzese.
