In applications involving organic vapour, the performance of high surface area carbons is often challenged by water vapour in the atmosphere. Small angle neutron scattering (SANS), through its ability to distinguish between different components by means of contrast variation, is ideally suited to investigating the behaviour of adsorbed layers in simultaneous contact with a mixed vapour phase. Even at high relative humidity (RH), water alone forms a discontinuous film composed of clusters on the surface of the oxidized microporous carbon used for these studies. When toluene is also present, all the available carbon surface is wetted. Toluene and water adsorb as a single phase already at RH 11.5%, and the concentration of water present in the adsorbed phase is as high as 2.9 wt.%, far above its solubility in bulk toluene (0.033 wt.% at 25 deg C). At RH 87% the concentration of water in the adsorbed phase is four times higher, approximately 12 wt.%. The recently proposed mechanism of anchoring of the water by the aromatic molecules may provide an explanation for this phenomenon.
Enhanced Ionic Conductivity of confined Ionic-Liquid in Angstrom-scale 2D channels
The University of Manchester（曼彻斯特大学）；Henry Royce Institute, The University of Manchester（亨利·罗伊丝研究所，曼彻斯特大学）；Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Imperial College, Molecular Sciences Research Hub, White City Campus（帝国理工学院自然科学学院化学系，分子科学研究中心，白城校区）；National Graphene Institute, The University of Manchester（国家石墨烯研究所，曼彻斯特大学）；Photon Science Institute, The University of Manchester（光子科学研究所，曼彻斯特大学）
A ferroelectric liquid crystal confined in cylindrical nanopores: Reversible smectic layer buckling, enhanced light rotation and extremely fast electro-optically active Goldstone excitations
