From the capillary condensation to the glass transition of a confined molecular liquid: Case of toluene

Abstract Confinement of glass-forming liquids in nanoporous materials was previously suggested to provide information on the growing heterogeneity length scale responsible of the glass formation. However extensive studies of various liquids under various confinement conditions conclude that the role of surface is dominant over the finite size effects leading to more complex description of the dynamics under confinement. Here we focus on the fluid wall interactions and their contributions at the approach of the glass transition of a simple molecular liquid, toluene. By changing the pore size and the chemistry of the surface, we propose to learn about the pore filling processes from adsorption experiments at high temperature; we relate them to the T-behavior within the pore of a thermodynamic quantity, the averaged density, and the mobility, via the measurements of the mean square displacements over a large T-range where the glass transition spreads out.