Water shows anomalies different from most of other materials.Different sceniaros have been proposed to explain water anomalies,among which the liquid-liquid phase transition(LLPT)is the most discussed one.It attributes water anomalies to the existence of a hypothesized liquid-liquid critical point(LLCP)buried deep in the supercooled region.We briefly review the recent experimental and theoretical progresses on the study of the LLPT in water.These studies include the discussion on the existence of the first order LLPT in supercooled water and the detection of liquid-liquid critical point.Simulational results of different water models for LLPT and the experimental evidence in confined water are also discussed.
Few-layer graphene grown on Ni thin films has been studied by scanning tunneling microscopy. In most areas on the surfaces, moir′e patterns resulted from rotational stacking faults were observed. At a bias lower than 200 mV, only one sublattice shows up in regions without moir′e patterns while both sublattices are seen in regions with moir′e pattens. This phenomenon can be used to identify AB stacked regions. The scattering characteristics at various types of step edges are different from those of monolayer graphene edges, either armchair or zigzag.
The hydrogen bond(HB) is an important type of intermolecular interaction, which is generally weak, ubiquitous,and essential to life on earth. The small mass of hydrogen means that many properties of HBs are quantum mechanical in nature. In recent years, because of the development of computer simulation methods and computational power, the influence of nuclear quantum effects(NQEs) on the structural and energetic properties of some hydrogen bonded systems has been intensively studied. Here, we present a review of these studies by focussing on the explanation of the principles underlying the simulation methods, i.e., the ab initio path-integral molecular dynamics. Its extension in combination with the thermodynamic integration method for the calculation of free energies will also be introduced. We use two examples to show how this influence of NQEs in realistic systems is simulated in practice.
