Dynamics of hydration water on the hydrophobic surface of Polyoxymethylene

Interfacial water is ubiquitous, playing a crucial role in biology, chemistry, physics, materials and environmental science. How does the hydrophobicity of the surface affect the dynamics of hydration water and by how much? In our last contribution, we proposed that surface water presents a universal onset of dynamics at a common temperature on distinct material interfaces. We choose two simple polymers with similar structure but different hydrophobicity, i.e. polyethylene glycol (PEG) and polyoxymethylene (POM) to quantitatively investigate this. We performed QENS experiments on polyethylene glycol (PEG) on the IRIS spectrometers about 2.5 years ago, withe the results about to be published. In this proposal, we ask for time to run a similar experimental campaign on POM.