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Updated: Sep 21, 2025

Surface Properties of Synthesized Nanoporous Carbon and Silica Matrices
Published on: March 27, 2019
Critical Contact Angle to Induce Capillary Rise of Polymers in Nanopores Does Not Depend on Chain Length
David J Ring1, Robert A Riggleman1, Daeyeon Lee1
1Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, United States.
Abstract:
We study the effect of physical confinement on the capillary infiltration of polymers into cylindrical nanopores using molecular dynamics simulations. In particular, we probe whether the critical contact angle (θc) above which capillary rise infiltration ceases to occur changes for long-chain polymers, possibly due to loss of conformation entropy induced by chain confinement. Surprisingly, θc does not strongly depend on the length of polymer chains and stays constant for large N. A free energy model is developed to show that θc depends strongly on the size of statistical segments rather than N, which we confirm by performing MD simulations of infiltration with semiflexible polymers. These results could provide guidelines in manufacturing polymer nanostructures and nanocomposites using capillary rise infiltration.
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