Chemists from the United States and South Korea, led by Richard Zare of Stanford University, described the results of experiments that contradict the opinion about the chemical stability of water. The scientists have found that hydrogen peroxide is formed in small drops of water without any external influences. Moreover, the concentration of peroxide increased with decreasing droplets and decreased with the addition of pure oxygen.

The chemists offer several hypotheses explaining the appearance of peroxide: the triboelectric effect, asymmetric charge separation, contact electrification and oxidation of water due to surface electric potential at the interface with air. The authors call the latter option, in which the peroxide is formed from two hydroxyls, the most likely.

The results obtained in this paper can be used both for basic research and in applied fields.