Mechanism of adsorption in cylindrical nanopores: The roles of fluctuations and correlations in stabilizing the adsorbed phase

Microscopic mechanism of adsorption in cylindrical nanopores with heterogenous wall structure

We study the microscopic mechanism of adsorption in nanometric cylindrical pores with strongly heterogeneous walls using grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations. The pore surface structure is modeled by a new lattice-site approach. Each site is characterized by two amplitudes--structural and energetic--that locally modify the structural and energetic properties of the surface. The amplitudes are randomly distributed over the pore wall. We have shown that different structural and energetic distribution functions lead to different mechanism of adsorption. The energetic site distribution plays the most crucial role in the submonolayer region. The structural site distribution modifies the multilayer adsorption. A method to analyze the stability of the adsorbed system using static susceptibility is proposed. Potential applications in multiscale modeling are discussed.

Desorption-limited mechanism of release from polymer nanofibers

This work examines the release of a model water-soluble compound from electrospun polymer nanofiber assemblies. Such release attracts attention in relation to biomedical applications, such as controlled drug delivery. It is also important for stem cell attachment and differentiation on biocompatible electrospun nanofiber scaffolds containing growth factors, which have been encapsulated by means of electrospinning. Typically, the release mechanism has been attributed to solid-state diffusion of the encapsulated compound from the fibers into the surrounding aqueous bath. Under this assumption, a 100% release of the encapsulated compound is expected in a certain (long) time. The present work focuses on certain cases where complete release does not happen, which suggests that solid-state diffusion may not be the primary mechanism at play. We show that in such cases the release rate can be explained by desorption of the embedded compound from nanopores in the fibers or from the outer surface of the fibers in contact with the water bath. After release, the water-soluble compound rapidly diffuses in water, whereas the release rate is determined by the limiting desorption stage. A model system of Rhodamine 610 chloride fluorescent dye embedded in electrospun monolithic poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA) or poly(caprolactone) (PCL) nanofibers, in nanofibers electrospun from PMMA/PCL blends, or in core-shell PMMA/PCL nanofibers is studied. Both the experimental results and theory point at the above mentioned desorption-related mechanism, and the predicted characteristic time, release rate, and effective diffusion coefficient agree fairly well with the experimental data. A practically important outcome of this surface release mechanism is that only the compound on the fiber and pore surfaces can be released, whereas the material encapsulated in the bulk cannot be freed within the time scales characteristic of the present experiments (days to months). Consequently, in such cases, complete release is impossible. We also demonstrate how the release rate can be manipulated by the polymer content and molecular weight affecting nanoporosity and the desorption enthalpy, as well as by the nanofiber structure (monolithic fibers, fibers from polymer blends, and core-shell fibers). In particular, it is shown that, by manipulating the above parameters, release times from tens of hours to months can be attained.

Influence of surface chemical heterogeneities on adsorption/desorption hysteresis and coexistence diagram of metastable states within cylindrical pores

Grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations are performed to determine the adsorption/desorption isotherms at different temperatures of a Lennard-Jones fluid confined within a simple model of cylindrical pores presenting chemical heterogeneities. A complex hysteresis loop is observed, showing hysteresis subloops (scanning curves). This is shown to be consistent with the existence of several metastable states (local minima in the system free energy). A recent extension to the Gibbs ensemble technique is then used to calculate the complete coexistence diagram of these local minima.

Electronic fluctuations in nanotube circuits and their sensitivity to gases and liquids

The temperature-dependent noise of individual, single-walled carbon nanotubes is measured here in a variety of different gases and liquids. The ambient environment is found to have only a weak relationship with device noise, even in cases where adsorption significantly changes the dc resistance. Correspondingly, a 450 K degassing procedure typically reduces the device noise by only 1 order of magnitude. An important exception to this finding is a pronounced, 100-fold increase in noise observed near gas-liquid phase transitions of the ambient. Wide-range temperature scans clearly identify the condensation of N(2), H(2), and CH(4) onto metallic nanotubes, but not the sublimation of CO(2). The observations suggest that nanotube devices can directly transduce ambient density fluctuations, though without an inherent gas specificity. Even so, the method is a particularly sensitive characterization of nanotube chemical interactions, one which is successful even for the extreme case of inert gases adsorbed on metallic nanotubes.