Modeling the influence of side stream and ink bottle structures on adsorption/desorption dynamics of fluids in long pores.

We apply dynamic mean field theory to study relaxation dynamics for lattice models of fluids confined in linear pores with side streams and with ink bottle structures. Our results show several mechanisms for how the pore structure affects the dynamics, and these are amplified in longer pores. An important conclusion of this work is that features such as side streams and ink bottle segments can substantially slow the equilibration of fluids confined in long pore systems where the pore lengths can be more than 100 micrometers, such as in porous silicon. This may make it difficult to properly equilibrate these systems for states close to those where the pores should be completely filled with liquids. The presence of trapped bubbles in the system may change the desorption characteristics of the system and the shape of the hysteresis loops.