No abstract

PACS. 87.20 -Membrane biophysics. PACS. 68.10 -Fluid surfaces and interfaces with fluids (inc. surface tension, capillarity, wetting and related phenomena).

Combined measurements are described involving elastic and quasi-elastic neutron scattering, quasi-elastic light scattering, nuclear magnetic resonance, and swelling pressure on an end-linked poly-(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) gel swollen to equilibrium in a good solvent (toluene) and the equivalent solution. The factors affecting the collective diffusion coefficient are considered. The swelling pressure measurements show that the osmotic modulus is appreciably depressed in the gel. The neutron spin-echo measurements reveal no difference in the dynamic response at intermediate and high values of the scattering vector Q. Elastic neutron scattering at small Q detects nonuniformities in the network structure, which are absent from the solution. These nonuniformities play a major role in the dynamic response of the system at lower Q and appear to be the cause of the observed reduction in osmotic pressure. The NMR measurements show a small increase of the solvent mobility in the gel, which is consistent with the appearance of structural nonuniformities in the system.

Coherent inelastic neutron scattering results obtained at different temperatures in the normal phase of betaine calcium chloride dihydrate (BCCD) are reported here. The experimental characterization of the mechanism which induces the transition from the parent phase to the incommensurate phase of BCCD is described. We show that the three lower-energy phonon branches of symmetry are temperature sensitive; the lowest of the three displays a conspicuous softening at a wavevector at . The present neutron scattering results are in good agreement with previous Raman and IR measurements.

We measured the dynamic structure factor of the liquid and glassy phases of the LiCl-6H(2)O solution by means of inelastic scattering of radiation in the visible, UV, and x-ray range, between 1 GHz and 10 THz, and by means of photon-correlation spectroscopy, between 0.01 Hz and 20 kHz. The measurements were performed in the temperature range between 353 and 80 K. Our data show that a single-relaxation process exists at high temperature, which has features similar to those of the single relaxation of pure water. Upon cooling the system below approximately 220 K, this single mode starts to differentiate two processes, a structural (alpha-) and a secondary (beta-) relaxation. As the temperature is decreased, the beta-relaxation is the vanishing continuation of the single, high-temperature process, while the onset of the alpha-relaxation occurs at the expense of the beta-process.