论文标题
原子尺度限制下的毛细管凝结
Capillary condensation under atomic-scale confinement
论文作者
论文摘要
水的毛细血管在性质和技术上无处不在。它通常在颗粒状和多孔培养基中发生,可以强烈改变诸如粘附,润滑,摩擦和腐蚀等特性,并且在微电脑,药品,食品和其他行业所采用的许多过程中很重要。具有百年历史的开尔文方程通常用于描述冷凝现象,并证明对液态弯液的直径良好,其直径较小。对于在环境湿度下涉及凝结的较小毛细血管,因此,凯尔文方程有望分解,因为所需的限制与水分子的大小相当。在这里,我们利用范德华组装的二维晶体组装来产生原子尺度的毛细血管并进行内部研究凝结。我们最小的毛细血管的高度小于4埃,只能容纳一层水。令人惊讶的是,即使在这个规模上,使用大量水的特征的宏观开尔文方程也可以准确地描述强质(云母)毛细血管中的冷凝跃迁,并且对弱亲水(石墨烯)的质量持续性仍然有效。我们表明,该一致性有些偶然,可以归因于毛细管壁的弹性变形,这抑制了由于原子尺度限制和水分子之间的可低调性而预期的巨型振荡行为。在许多现实情况下,我们的工作为理解最小的规模的毛细血管效应提供了急需的基础。
Capillary condensation of water is ubiquitous in nature and technology. It routinely occurs in granular and porous media, can strongly alter such properties as adhesion, lubrication, friction and corrosion, and is important in many processes employed by microelectronics, pharmaceutical, food and other industries. The century-old Kelvin equation is commonly used to describe condensation phenomena and shown to hold well for liquid menisci with diameters as small as several nm. For even smaller capillaries that are involved in condensation under ambient humidity and, hence, of particular practical interest, the Kelvin equation is expected to break down, because the required confinement becomes comparable to the size of water molecules. Here we take advantage of van der Waals assembly of two-dimensional crystals to create atomic-scale capillaries and study condensation inside. Our smallest capillaries are less than 4 angstroms in height and can accommodate just a monolayer of water. Surprisingly, even at this scale, the macroscopic Kelvin equation using the characteristics of bulk water is found to describe accurately the condensation transition in strongly hydrophilic (mica) capillaries and remains qualitatively valid for weakly hydrophilic (graphene) ones. We show that this agreement is somewhat fortuitous and can be attributed to elastic deformation of capillary walls, which suppresses giant oscillatory behavior expected due to commensurability between atomic-scale confinement and water molecules. Our work provides a much-needed basis for understanding of capillary effects at the smallest possible scale important in many realistic situations.