Does twist angle affect the properties of water confined inside twisted bilayer graphene?

Abstract

Graphene nanoslit pore is used for nanofluidic devices like water desalination, ion-selective channels, ionic transistors, sensing, molecular sieving, blue energy harvesting, and protein sequencing. It is a strenuous task to prepare nanofluidic devices because a small misalignment leads to a significant alteration in various properties of the devices. Here we focus on the rotational misalignment between two parallel graphene sheets. Using molecular dynamics simulation, we probe the structure and dynamics of monolayer water confined inside graphene nanochannels for a range of commensurate twist angles. With SPC/E and TIP4P/2005 water model, our simulations reveal the independence of equilibrium number density $(n \sim 13 nm^{-2})$ for SPC/E and $(n \sim 11.5 nm^{-2})$ for TIP4P/2005) across twists. Based on the respective densities of water models, the structure and dielectric constant are invariant of twist angles. The confined water structure at this shows square ice ordering for SPC/E water only. TIP4P/2005 shows ordering at the vicinity of a critical density $(n \sim 12.5 nm^{-2})$. The average perpendicular dielectric constant of the confined water remains anomalously low ($\sim 2$ for SPC/E and $\sim 6$ for TIP4P/2005) for studied twist angles. We find that the friction coefficient of confined water molecules varies for small twist angles while becoming independent for twists greater than $5.1^{o}$. Our results indicate that small angular misalignment will not impair the dielectric properties of monolayer water within graphene slit-pore but can significantly influence its dynamics.