3a06 Diffusional behavior of small gas molecules in liquid crystal membrane

Abstract

It is known that the diffusional behavior of gaseous solutes, the size of which is smaller than that of the solvents, can be hardly described by unified equations. Here we studied the diffusion of rare gas molecules in smecitic B monolayers by MD simulation, focusing on the mass-dependency of the solute gases. The diffusion coefficients increased with decreasing the mass of the solutes until a certain threshold, and then converged at a constant value. The result suggests that the solutes motion can be determined by the motion of the solvent LC molecules when the mass is smaller than the alkyl group.