17.07.2009
Surprisingly, spatially nano-confined liquid n-hexane is still an isotropic liquid: We did not find any hints of collective orientational order as a function of filling of glass capillaries with 7 nm mean diameter and 400 micrometer length. A combined optical birefringence/vapour sorption isotherm study reporting this message was published in Physical Review B today. The absence of any orientational order in the confined liquid state highlights the importance of an anisotropic crystallization process named after Percy W. Bridgman (a Harvard scholar and Nobel Laureate) for the occurence of preferred orientations upon solidification of n-hexane and medium-length n-alkanes in nanochannels of mesoporous silicon.
March 2009
Crystallization study on n-hexane in silicon nanochannels published in Physical Review Eand a study on phase transitions and molecular dynamics of spatially nanoconfined n-hexadecanol (a joint project with the research group of Rolf Pelster) published in Physical Review B.
22.06.2009
Study on capillary rise dynamics of water in hydrophilic nanopores published in Physical Review E. A ray-tracing movie which illustrates this spontaneous imbibition process in mesoporous silica glass (monolithic Vycor) can be downloaded here. It employs the Liquid-Surface-Simulation Macro package (LSSM) for POV-Ray by Tim Nik Wenclawiak.
05.06.2009
Anke Henschel und Simon Grüner sind gemeinsam mit René Berwanger aus der Arbeitsgruppe Pelster als Sieger aus dem Master Cup in Saarbrücken im Rahmen des EXIST-priME-Cup hervorgegangen.
Glückwunsch an die drei!
