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X-ray spectroscopy is a powerful tool to study the local charge distribution of chemical systems. Together with the liquid jet it becomes possible to probe chemical systems in their natural environment, the liquid phase. In this work, we present X-ray absorption (XA), X-ray emission (XE) and resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) data of pure water and various salt solutions and show the possibilities these methods offer to elucidate the nature of ion-water interaction.
In the current work, X-ray emission spectra of aqueous solutions of different inorganic salts within the Hofmeister series are presented. The results reflect the direct interaction of the ions with the water molecules and therefore, reveal general properties of the salt-water interactions. Within the experimental precision a significant effect of the ions on the water structure has been observed but no ordering according to the structure maker/structure breaker concept could be mirrored in the results indicating that the Hofmeister effect if existent may be caused by more complex interactions.
Hydration shells around ions are crucial for many fundamental biological and chemical processes. Their local physicochemical properties are quite different from those of bulk water and hard to probe experimentally. We address this problem by combining soft X-ray spectroscopy using a liquid jet and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations together with ab initio electronic structure calculations to elucidate the water ion interaction in a MgCl2 solution at the molecular level. Our results reveal that salt ions mainly affect the electronic properties of water molecules in close vicinity and that the oxygen K-edge X-ray emission spectrum of water molecules in the first solvation shell differs significantly from that of bulk water. Ion-specific effects are identified by fingerprint features in the water X-ray emission spectra. While Mg2+ ions cause a bathochromic shift of the water lone pair orbital, the 3p orbital of the Cl- ions causes an additional peak in the water emission spectrum at around 528 eV.