Unification: Viscosity, permittivity, and hydration forces near an interface

Journal article, 2023

In water-based solutions near interfaces, the hydration forces, dielectric permittivity, and viscosity depend on the short-range order in the arrangement of water molecules. The former two quantities were earlier rationalized by employing the Ginzburg-Landau expression for the solution free energy. Driven by the spirit of unification, we show that the dependence of the viscosity coefficient on the coordinate perpendicular to the interface can be rationalized in this framework as well by using in addition a linear Evans-Polanyi correlation between the activation energy determining viscosity and the solution free energy. In the conventional hydrodynamics, this effect is often formally described by introducing the partial-slip boundary conditions or a stagnant layer near interfaces. We show how the corresponding slip or stagnant-layer length can be explained and quantified.