Low-temperature dynamics of water confined in a hydrophobic mesoporous material

Quasielastic neutron scattering was used to study the dynamics of three-dimensional confined water in a hydrophobic mesoporous material designated as CMK-1 in the temperature range from 250 to 170 K. We observe a crossover phenomenon at temperature TL. We find that TL of water confined in CMK-1 occurs in between previous observations of one-dimensional confined water in materials with different hydrophilicities. This provides the first evidence that besides the obvious surface effect brought about by the hydrophobic confinements, TL is also dependent on the dimensionality of the geometry of the confinement.