Speaker
Description
Understanding how molecular interactions govern fluid transport in mesoporous materials is essential for applications ranging from catalysis to energy harvesting and oil recovery. In nanoscale pores, interactions between fluid molecules and between fluid and pore walls can strongly influence imbibition dynamics, yet remain challenging to quantify experimentally.
We address this question by monitoring capillary-driven imbibition in mesoporous silicon using thin-film interference. Electrochemically etched membranes act as optical thin films, where shifts in near-infrared interference fringes provide time-resolved information on filling dynamics under confinement.
The experiments employ systematically varied alcohol–water mixtures, including a series of diols with increasing chain length. By varying the fluid composition, we investigate how molecular polarity and the balance between hydrophilic and hydrophobic interactions, in addition to classical fluid parameters such as viscosity and surface tension, relate to transport behavior. Measurements under different humidity conditions provide a comparative dataset across the series, highlighting fluid–fluid and fluid–wall interactions.
These measurements are complemented by experiments at large-scale facilities, providing additional spatial and temporal resolution and enabling observations across different scales. Together, these approaches establish a versatile framework for probing how molecular interactions govern fluid transport in mesoporous systems.
| Country | Germany |
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