Stability of a Nonwetting Liquid in a Nanoporous Medium

Abstract

A physical mechanism has been proposed to describe the formation of a stable state of a nonwetting liquid after filling of a porous medium at an increased pressure with the subsequent reduction of the overpressure to zero. It has been shown that the observed transition of the system of nonwetting-liquid nanoclusters to the stable state in a narrow range of filling factors and a narrow temperature interval is due to a decrease in the surface free energy without change in the chemical potential owing to the collective interactions between liquid nanoclusters in the neighboring pores. This effectively corresponds to their mutual attraction. The model makes it possible to describe the observed dependences of the volume of the liquid in pores in the stable state on the filling factor and temperature.