To wet or not to wet? Dispersion forces tip the balance for water ice on metals

For almost 30 years now, density functional theory (DFT) has been used to explore the molecular level details of water-metal interfaces. However, since the typical generalized gradient approximation exchange-correlation functionals used in these studies do not account for van der Waals (vdW) dispersion forces, the role dispersion plays in water adsorption remains unclear. Here, we tackle this issue head on applying a newly developed non-local functional [J. Klime\v{s} {\it et al}., J. Phys.: Condens. Matter {\bf 22}, 022201 (2010)] to two of the most widely studied water-ice adsorption systems, namely water on Cu(110) and Ru(0001). We show that non-local correlations contribute substantially to the water-metal bond and that this is an important factor in governing the relative stabilities of wetting layers and 3D bulk ice [J. Carrasco {\it et al}., Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 106}, 026101 (2011)]. Due to the greater polarizability of the substrate metal atoms, non-local correlations between water and the metal exceed those between water within ice. This sheds light on a long-standing problem, wherein common DFT exchange-correlation functionals incorrectly predict that none of the low temperature experimentally characterized ice-like wetting layers are thermodynamically stable.