Adsorption of a fluid in an aerogel: integral equation approach
Abstract
We present a theoretical study of the phase diagram and the structure of a fluid adsorbed in high-porosity aerogels by means of an integral-equation approach combined with the replica formalism. To simulate a realistic gel environment, we use an aerogel structure factor obtained from an off-lattice diffusion-limited cluster-cluster aggregation process. The predictions of the theory are in qualitative agreement with the experimental results, showing a substantial narrowing of the gas-liquid coexistence curve (compared to that of the bulk fluid), associated with weak changes in the critical density and temperature. The influence of the aerogel structure (nontrivial short-range correlations due to connectedness, long-range fractal behavior of the silica strands) is shown to be important at low fluid densities.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0107507,
title = {Adsorption of a fluid in an aerogel: integral equation approach},
author = {V. Krakoviack and E. Kierlik and M. -L. Rosinberg and G. Tarjus},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0107507},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
24 pages, 9 figures