The quest for the structure of water and aqueous solutions

During the past 25 years neutron diffraction has made a major contribution to understanding the microscopic structure of water and aqueous solutions. By performing isotope substitution on specific atomic sites, it is possible to develop a comprehensive picture of the way water molecules organize themselves around the ions and molecules which dissolve in or mix with water. The resulting data provide a sensitive, sometimes controversial, test of existing theories of the aqueous systems, which due to their complexity at the microscopic level, can normally only be derived using computer simulation techniques. This paper reviews some of the recent achievements in the field of neutron diffraction from aqueous systems and suggests how future experiments might be interpreted with the aid of computer simulation techniques.

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