Imbibition Front Broadening in Mesoporous Vycor Glass

26.6.2012 Study on the front broadening during water imbibition in nanoporous glass (Vycor) published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS 109, 10245 (2012).

 

Confinement effects in rod-like LCs

10.8.2012 Optical birefringence study on the influence of nano-confinement on nematic liquid crystals published in Physical Review E .

Imbibition of water and a liquid crystal in nanoporous silica

11.5.2011


Gravimetric study on the capillarity-driven invasion dynamics of the rod-like liquid crystal octyloxycyanobiphenyl (8OCB) in mesoporous monolithic silica glass (Vycor) reveals the existence of a paranematic phase driven by the molecular alignment of the rods in the narrow pore structure (see article published as part of the special issue on nano- and microfluidics in Journal of Physics).

nPropanolGraphitePRL

13.4.2011

Transition from van-der-Waals to hydrogen-bridge bonding dominated interaction upon physisorption on graphite reported in Physical Review Letters .

Spring2011

9.4.2011 Campus of Saarland University - Spring's Arrival

  1. X-mas hike 2010
  2. Collective orientational order of molecular liquids revealed by optical birefringence
  3. Optical Switching - Movie
  4. Smectic and nematic order of 8OCB

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News

  • 26.02.2025 Centre for Molecular Water Science (CMWS) inaugurated

    The DESY-initiated CMWS is a Europe-wide research network in the field of molecular water research. The CMWS declaration has been signed by forty-seven founding members from twelve countries – including fourteen German universities and eight Helmholtz Centres. See also the corresponding press release.

  • 18.11.2024 Ultrafast X-ray imaging at the European XFEL of a water droplet sucked into a porous silicon membrane by capillary action

  • 12.09.2024 Article "Deformation dynamics of nanopores upon water imbibition" published in PNAS

    Our article shows by a combination of experiments and computer simulations of water imbibition in nanopores that the competition between expansive, surface stress release at pore walls and negative, contractile Laplace pressures of nanoscale menisci lead to an unusual macroscopic behavior of the porous medium, which is generic for any liquid/nanoporous solid combination. The results allow one to quantify surface and Laplace stresses and to monitor nanoscale flow and infiltration states by relatively simple length measurements of the porous medium.

  • 17.05.2024 - New publication: "Self-Assembly of Ionic Superdiscs in Nanopores"

    Our study on discotic ionic liquid crystals has been published in ACS Nano - see also the DESY press release.

  • May 2024 - At this year's PSST conference in Brno (Czech Republic) Stella Gries received the prize for the talk of the day. Congratulations to her and also to Manfred May for the 2nd place in the best poster award of the conference!