Bianco, ValentinoFranzese, Giancarlo2015-05-202015-05-202014-04-042045-2322https://hdl.handle.net/2445/65592The properties of water can have a strong dependence on the confinement. Here, we consider a water monolayer nanoconfined between hydrophobic parallel walls under conditions that prevent its crystallization. We investigate, by simulations of a many-body coarse-grained water model, how the properties of the liquid are affected by the confinement. We show, by studying the response functions and the correlation length and by performing finite-size scaling of the appropriate order parameter, that at low temperature the monolayer undergoes a liquid-liquid phase transition ending in a critical point in the universality class of the two-dimensional (2D) Ising model. Surprisingly, by reducing the linear size L of the walls, keeping the walls separation h constant, we find a 2D-3D crossover for the universality class of the liquid-liquid critical point for L/h=~50, i.e. for a monolayer thickness that is small compared to its extension. This result is drastically different from what is reported for simple liquids, where the crossover occurs for , and is consistent with experimental results and atomistic simulations. We shed light on these findings showing that they are a consequence of the strong cooperativity and the low coordination number of the hydrogen bond network that characterizes water.10 p.application/pdfengcc-by-nc-nd (c) Bianco, Valentino et al., 2014http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/esTermodinàmicaTransformacions de fase (Física estadística)Fenòmens crítics (Física)ThermodynamicsPhase transformations (Statistical physics)Critical phenomena (Physics)info:eu-repo/semantics/article6511002015-05-20info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess24699181