This book highlights the fundamentals for understanding the essential problems and latest progresses in basic water science. Water is the most abundant, fundamental and important matter in nature. Arguably it is also the material that human beings study the most but misunderstand the most. Compared with the environmental science and engineering research activities on water resources, water pollution and water usage closely related to social problems at the macro level, basic scientific research on water at the molecular level has just emerged, the impact of which is not fully recognized yet. This book is devoted to introducing some important advances in the field of basic water science in past decades, with a particular emphasis on recent results on water and the interactions between water and solid surfaces at the molecular level. Starting from introducing concepts and popular theoretical and experimental methods for basic water research, this book mainly focuses on the atomic composition, electronic structure, and physicochemical properties of water molecules, water clusters and water layers (including surface water layers and water surface layers), rules for water adsorption on metals, oxides, and other typical solid surfaces such as salt, as well as the microscopic processes and mechanisms of water diffusion, wetting, decomposition and phase transformations under a variety of conditions. It is a good reference book for students and researchers in water-related science.

Dr. Sheng Meng is a Professor and Director of Surface Physics Laboratory at Institute of Physics,

Chinese Academy of Sciences. He obtained his Bachelor's degree in physics

from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2000, and his Ph.D. degrees in condensed matter physics from the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and in applied physics from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden in 2004. During 2005-2009, he worked at the Department of Physics, Harvard University first as a post-doctoral researcher and then a research associate. Dr. Meng's research interests focus on quantum electron dynamics of condensed matters, design of quantum materials, and the electronic/quantum nature of wetting. His H-index is 65 by 2022.

Prof. Enge Wang is a Chair Professor in condensed matter physics at Peking University and the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academyof Sciences, and an honorary professor at the University of Hong Kong. He is president emeritus of Peking University and vice president emeritus of Chinese Academy of Sciences. He also serves as Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the World Academy of Sciences, Fellow of American Physical Society, and Fellow of Institute of Physics, UK.  

Chapter 1 Introduction: understanding the structure and function of water on the molecular scale.- Chapter 2 Theoretical methods.- Chapter 3 Experimental methods.- Chapter 4 Water molecules, small clusters and bulk water.- Chapter 5 Experimental study of the interactions between water and surface.- Chapter 6 Adsorption of water on Pt (111) surface.- Chapter 7 General law of water adsorption on metal surfaces.- Chapter 8 Adsorption of water on non-metallic surfaces.- Chapter 9 Macroscopic and microscopic surface wetting.- Chapter 10 Hydrated ions on the surface.- Chapter 11 Microscopic processes of salt dissolution and nucleation.- Chapter XII Surface of ice.- Chapter 13 Quantum behaviors of H in water.- Chapter 14 Phase transitions in confined water.