Water adlayers on noble metal surfaces: Insights from energy decomposition analysis

The work of Paul and Ruben on understanding the metal/water adlayers via energy decomposition analysis is now available online in JCP. Capturing the polarization energy is enough to retrieve the complex many-body physics!

The less ordered, densely packed √39×√39 ice-like structure is found to be most stable over noble metal (Pt, Pd, Ag, Au) (111) surfaces, closely followed by the similar √37×√37 adlayer, that is most stable over Cu(111).