Interfaces govern the structure of angstrom-scale confined water solutions

Abstract Nanoconfinement of aqueous electrolytes is ubiquitous in geological, biological, and technological contexts, including sedimentary rocks, water channel proteins, and applications like desalination and water purification membranes. The structure and properties of water in nanoconfinement can differ significantly from bulk water, exhibiting, for instance, modified hydrogen bonds, altered dielectric constant, and distinct phase transitions. Despite the importance of nanoconfined water, experimentally elucidating the nanoconfinement effects on water, such as its orientation and hydrogen bond (H-bond) network, has remained challenging. Here, we study two-dimensionally nanoconfined aqueous electrolyte solutions with tunable confinement from nanoscale to angstrom-scale sandwiched between a graphene sheet and calcium fluoride (CaF 2 ) achieved by capillary condensation. We employ heterodyne-detection sum-frequency generation (HD-SFG) spectroscopy, a surface-specific vibrational spectroscopy capable of directly and selectively probing water orientation and H-bond environment at interfaces and under confinement. The vibrational spectra of the nanoconfined water can be described quantitatively by the sum of the individual interfacial water signals from the CaF 2 /water and water/graphene interfaces until the confinement reduces to angstrom-scale (<~8 Å). Machine-learning-accelerated ab initio molecular dynamics simulations confirm our experimental observation. These results manifest that interfacial, rather than nanoconfinement effects, dominate the water structure until angstrom-level confinement for the two-dimensionally nanoconfined aqueous electrolytes.