Hydrophobic hydration - Ecological aspects

The problem of interaction between organic and water moieties (neutral or ionized water molecular species) is of particular interest in chemistry in view of its implications to physico-chemical behavior of chemical and biological systems. Hydration patterns which result from interaction between hydrophilic and hydrophobic species are non trivial in chemistry. The key issue is that water molecules are able to aggregate in extremely large variety of structural modes. Tetrahedral geometry of intermolecular bonding around water molecule is analogous in geometrical terms to that of intramolecular geometry of carbon atom, known as a source of infinite number of organic structures. In general, space filling with hydrogen bonded water molecules is rather low. It may be illustrated in the following way: volume of neonium atoms is comparable to that of water molecules whilst having atomic mass just 10% higher than molecular mass of water. Thus, liquid neonium and liquid water would have similar densities if molecular packing is of comparable efficiency. The real values are much different, however. Liquid neonium at its boiling temperature has density of 1.20 g cm(-3), thus displaying significantly denser packing that that of water molecules. It certainly means that solid or liquid water has a 'porous' structure and may lead to molecular inclusion of foreign (guest) species in the intermolecular space of water framework. This property is not that simple, however, since inclusion of foreign (guest) species is, as a rule, associated with rearrangement of the host framework structure [1]. Anyway, inefficient packing of the mono-component host solid phases may be considered as a prerequisite for its pronounced clathration ability.