Diffusion is known to be quantified by measuring the rate of molecular fluxes in the direction of falling concentration. In contrast with intuition, considering methanol diffusion in a novel type of nanoporous material (MOF ZIF-8), this rate has now been found to be enhanced rather than slowed down by an opposing flux of labeled molecules. In terms of the key quantities of random particle movement, this result means that the self-diffusivity exceeds the transport diffusivity. It is rationalized by considering the strong intermolecular interaction and the dominating role of intercage hopping in mass transfer in the systems under study.

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While n-hexane (nC6) can adsorb at any location within the MFI zeolite pore network, configurational considerations cause the branched isomer 2-methylpentane (2MP) to locate preferentially at the channel intersections. For adsorption of nC6/2MP mixtures, infrared microscopy (IRM) measurements show that the adsorption selectivity favors the linear isomer by about one order of magnitude when the total mixture loading, Θ t , exceeds four molecules per unit cell at which all intersection sites are fully occupied. The IRM data are in quantitative agreement with configurational-bias Monte Carlo (CBMC) simulations. IRM monitoring of the transient uptake of nC6/2MP mixtures within crystals of MFI exposed to step increases in the pressures shows that the configurational entropy effect also leaves its imprint on the uptake characteristics. For operating conditions in which Θ t > 4, increase in the 2MP partial pressure in the bulk gas phase leads to a reduction in the 2MP uptake; this reduction leads to a concomitant and synergistic increase in the diffusivities of both isomers due to reduced extent of intersection blocking.

Microimaging by IR microscopy is applied to the recording of the evolution of the concentration profiles of reactant and product molecules during catalytic reaction, notably during the hydrogenation of benzene to cyclohexane by nickel dispersed within a nanoporous glass. Being defined as the ratio between the reaction rate in the presence of and without diffusion limitation, the effectiveness factors of catalytic reactions were previously determined by deliberately varying the extent of transport limitation by changing a suitably chosen system parameter, such as the particle size and by comparison of the respective reaction rates. With the novel options of microimaging, effectiveness factors become accessible in a single measurement by simply monitoring the distribution of the reactant molecules over the catalyst particles.

The remarkable differences in the guest diffusivities in nanoporous materials commonly found with the application of different measuring techniques are usually ascribed to the existence of a hierarchy of transport resistances in addition to the diffusional resistance of the pore system and their differing influence due to the differing diffusion path lengths covered by the different measuring techniques. We report diffusion measurements with nanoporous glasses where the existence of such resistances could be avoided. Molecular propagation over diffusion path lengths from hundreds of nanometers up to millimeters was thus found to be controlled by a uniform mechanism, appearing in coinciding results of microscopic and macroscopic diffusion measurement.