Dynamics of formation of the Exclusion Zone near hydrophilic surfaces

Highlights: • Exclusion Zone layer formation. • Two-fluids structure of liquid water. • Long range van der Waals forces. • Coherent domains. • Colloidal crystals formation. EZ water is unable to host solutes, what provides the root of the name Exclusion Zone, and its formation law points towards a diffusive process. These peculiarities have attracted the interest of scientists because it challenges all the theories which have tried to describe the structure of liquid water. The mixture of H-bond stable and H-bond distorted structures envisaged by very recent experimental findings, cannot account for the long-lived hexagonal configuration observed near the Nafion surface. A theoretical account for the phenomenology of H-bond is provided which looks able to explain many among the most striking feature of this water.