ABSTRACT
Perhaps a more appropriate title for this chapter would have been Real Water on Real Solid Surfaces or, alternatively Real (Water on Solid Surfaces) because here we are no longer involved with pure, pristine, contamination-free water but instead with the water we are used to and on which we depend. On the other hand we leave the ideal, homogeneous, flat, defect-free, perfectly ordered surfaces in well-defined conditions and enter the realm of actual, practical (also termed technical) surfaces. The following sections give a glimpse of selected examples where water/solid interfaces play a key role in real working conditions, for example, when they are exposed to ambient conditions. Such selection aims to cover a wide range of important phenomena and among the plethora of existing examples only a few of them are considered. We show how water can be purified and used as a source of energy by the action of photoactive surfaces as well as the detrimental action of corrosion and degradation caused by heterogeneous chemistry induced by water. Intentional condensation high in the troposphere and the adhesive properties of liquid water are also discussed and we finish with a curious case of water at solid/vacuum interfaces.
