IJMS, Vol. 21, Pages 622: Specific Heat and Transport Functions ofWater (International Journal of Molecular Sciences)

Numerous water characteristics are essentially ascribed to its peculiarity to form stronghydrogen bonds that become progressively more stable on decreasing the temperature. However, thestructural and dynamical implications of the molecular rearrangement are still subject of debate andintense studies. In this work, we observe that the thermodynamic characteristics of liquid water arestrictly connected to its dynamic characteristics. In particular, we compare the thermal behaviourof the isobaric specific heat of water, measured in different confinement conditions at atmosphericpressure (and evaluated by means of theoretical studies) with its configurational contribution obtainedfrom the values of the measured self-diffusion coefficient through the use of the Adam–Gibbsapproach. Our results confirm the existence of a maximum in the specific heat of water at about 225K and indicate that especially at low temperature the configurational contributions to the entropy aredominant.