title: Water's hydrogen bonds in the hydrophobic effect: a simple model.
abstract: We propose a simple analytical model to account for water's hydrogen bonds in the hydrophobic effect. It is based on computing a mean-field partition function for a water molecule in the first solvation shell around a solute molecule. The model treats the orientational restrictions from hydrogen bonding, and utilizes quantities that can be obtained from bulk water simulations. We illustrate the principles in a 2-dimensional Mercedes-Benz-like model. Our model gives good predictions for the heat capacity of hydrophobic solvation, reproduces the solvation energies and entropies at different temperatures with only one fitting parameter, and accounts for the solute size dependence of the hydrophobic effect. Our model supports the view that water's hydrogen bonding propensity determines the temperature dependence of the hydrophobic effect. It explains the puzzling experimental observation that dissolving a nonpolar solute in hot water has positive entropy.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Graduate Group of Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94143, USA.
authors.forename: Huafeng
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Ken A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Dill
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D006358:Hot Temperature; D006860:Hydrogen Bonding; D057927:Hydrophobic and Hydrophilic Interactions; D008956:Models, Chemical; D010316:Particle Size; D014867:Water / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D014867:Water