Hydrodynamic origin of diffusion in nanopores

Abstract

We study the transport of a subcritical Lennard-Jones fluid in a cylindrical nanopore, using a combination of equilibrium and nonequilibrium as well as dual control volume grand canonical molecular dynamics methods. We show that all three techniques yield the same value of the transport coefficient for diffusely reflecting pore walls, even in the presence of viscous transport. We also demonstrate that the classical Knudsen mechanism is not manifested, and that a combination of viscous flow and momentum exchange at the pore wall governs the transport over a wide range of densities.