Center for Functional Nanomaterials Seminar

Center for Functional Nanomaterials Special Seminar


Disordered water phases from ambient to ultrahigh pressure

Roberto Car
Princeton University

Tuesday, April 26, 2016
11:00 a.m.
CFN, Bldg. 735, 2nd floor Seminar Room

The unusual properties of water, including the thermodynamic anomalies of the liquid, the existence of more than one amorphous ice form, and the abnormal mobilities of the water ions, derive from the tetrahedral network of hydrogen bonds that hold the molecules together. Under applied pressure the topology of the network changes but local tetrahedrality is preserved as the system explores a variety of different phases until at extreme pressure the molecules dissociate into ions and the hydrogen bonds collapse. Modern ab-initio simulations provide a unifying picture of these processes. In this talk, I will review recent progress in these studies stressing connections between theory, simulation, and experiment.

Bio
Roberto Car of Princeton University is Ralph W. Dornte professor for chemistry with a simultaneous appointment at the Material Sciences Institute of the university. He is a professor in the Theory Department, of the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society. His research focus is theory and numerical simulation (classical and quantum) of condensed and molecular systems. He studied physics and attained a doctorate in 1971 in nuclear technology at the Politecnico di Milano.
After being professor for physics at SISSA in Trieste (1984-1991), and at University of Geneva (1991-1999) he joined Princeton University in 1999. In 2007, a birthday symposium was held at ICTP. He received the Aneesur Rahman prize in computational physics. The Aneesur Rahman Prize is the highest honor given by the American Physical Society for work in computational physics.