The percolation transition in filling a nanoporous body by a nonwetting liquid

Abstract

The paper presents the results of an experimental study of the percolation transition in filling by nonwetting liquids of nanoporous bodies of various natures with different specific surface areas and mean pore and granule sizes. The liquid that we used was an aqueous solution of ethylene glycol. The hysteresis and non-outflow phenomena observed in this transition at various (known) surface energies of liquids were studied by varying the concentration of ethylene glycol. This helped us explain the mechanism of the percolation transition in filling nanoporous bodies with nonwetting liquids. It was shown that, to quantitatively describe the observed dependences in terms of percolation theory taking into account energy barriers to filling, we must use a non-scaling distribution function of clusters of accessible and filled pores that admits the formation of pore clusters of arbitrary dimensions.