Experimental investigation on pressurized liquid in confining nanoenvironment

In this letter, the authors report the experimental observations of pressure induced liquid motions in a confining nanoporous gel. As the pressure is sufficiently high, water molecules can move out of the initially energetically favorable gel matrix and enter the hydrophobic nanopores. As the pressure is lowered, this process is irreversible, leading to the pronounced hysteresis of sorption isotherm. This phenomenon is essential to developing advanced energy absorption systems. A first-order thermodynamics analysis is presented. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.