Imbibition triggered by capillary condensation in nanopores

Kavli Affiliate: Abraham Stroock

| First 5 Authors: Olivier Vincent, Bastien Marguet, Abraham Stroock, ,

| Summary:

We study the spatio-temporal dynamics of water uptake by capillary
condensation from unsaturated vapor in mesoporous silicon layers (pore radius
$r_mathrm{p} simeq 2$ nm), taking advantage of the local changes in optical
reflectance as a function of water saturation. Our experiments elucidate two
qualitatively different regimes as a function of the imposed external vapor
pressure: for low saturations, equilibration occurs via a diffusion-like
process; for high saturations, an imbibition-like wetting front results in fast
equilibration towards a fully saturated sample. We show that the imbibition
dynamics can be described by a modified Lucas-Washburn equation that takes into
account the liquid stresses implied by Kelvin equation.

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