Identification of Free OH and its Implication on Structural Changes of Liquid Water

The molecular structure of liquid water has been an outstanding issue for many years. The identification of free -OH holds the key in differentiating structure models for liquid water. By analyzing the relative changes of the intensity and depolarization ratio in temperature dependent Raman spectra, the occurrence of free -OH in liquid water is unambiguously determined. Furthermore, upon the increase of temperature from 5 degrees C to 85 degrees C, the structure of liquid water undergoes significant change, but the relative proportion of free -OH is considerably small and remains almost unchanged. This implies that the breaking of hydrogen bond from the tetrahedral structure prefers to occur at the site of the hydrogen acceptor. The energetic favoring of the structural change for liquid water is thus clearly revealed from experiments.