Infrared investigation of water encapsulated in non ionic reverse micelles

Water confined in non-ionic fluorocarbon reverse micelles was investigated through infrared spectroscopy. The characteristic OH stretching band is seen to exhibit significant changes upon growing water core size. An analysis in terms of three gaussians, each of which being ascribed to different water "type" molecules is performed. From a comparison with ionic systems, it is found that the presence of counterions is not a major factor in the perturbation of water connectivity, thus suggesting that the size of confinement prevail