Molecular Diffusion under Confinement

The Benefit of Microscopic Measuring Techniques for Unveiling Structure-mobility Rela- Tions in Molecular Diffusion under Confinement

Hydration structure of water confined between mica surfaces.

We report further molecular dynamics simulations on the structure of bound hydration layers under extreme confinement between mica surfaces. We find that the liquid phase of water is maintained down to 2 monolayer (ML) thick, whereas the structure of the K(+) ion hydration shell is close to the bulk structure even under D = 0.92 nm confinement. Unexpectedly, the density of confined water remain...

Searching target sites on DNA by proteins: Role of DNA dynamics under confinement

DNA-binding proteins (DBPs) rapidly search and specifically bind to their target sites on genomic DNA in order to trigger many cellular regulatory processes. It has been suggested that the facilitation of search dynamics is achieved by combining 3D diffusion with one-dimensional sliding and hopping dynamics of interacting proteins. Although, recent studies have advanced the knowledge of molecul...

Multistate empirical valence bond study of temperature and confinement effects on proton transfer in water inside hydrophobic nanochannels

Microscopic characteristics of an aqueous excess proton in a wide range of thermodynamic states, from low density amorphous ices (down to 100 K) to high temperature liquids under the critical point (up to 600 K), placed inside hydrophobic graphene slabs at the nanometric scale (with interplate distances between 3.1 and 0.7 nm wide) have been analyzed by means of molecular dynamics simulations. ...

Molecular understanding of diffusion in confinement.

We introduce a computational method to directly relate diffusivities to the microscopic behavior of the adsorbed molecules. We apply this method to gases in an MFI-type molecular sieve, the reference system in this field. Transitions in the number and nature of adsorption sites result in temporary local increases in the diffusion. This occurs at different loadings in each of the x, y, and z dir...