EFFECT OF THE WATER-WALL INTERACTION POTENTIALS ON THE PROPERTIES OF AQUEOUS SOLUTIONS CONFINED WITHIN A UNIFORMLY CHARGED NANO-CHANNEL

Studies on the effect of the wall-ion, wall-water, water-ion and ion-ion interaction on properties of water and ions in nano-channels have been performed through the use of different kinds of ions or different models of potential energy between wall-ion or wall-water. On this paper, we address the effect of water-wall interaction potential on the properties of confined aqueous solution by using the molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. As the interaction potential energies between water and wall we employed the models of the Weeks-Chandler-Andersen (WCA) and Lennard-Jones (LJ). On the MD simulations, 680 water molecules and 20 ions are included between uniformly charged plates that are separated by 2.6 nm. The water molecules are modeled by using the rigid SPC/E model (simple point charge/Extended) and the ions by the charged Lennard-Jones particle model. We compared the results obtained by using WCA potential with those by LJ potential. We also compared the results (e.g. ion density and electro-static potential distributions) in each of the above cases with those provided by solving the Poisson-Boltzmann equation.