Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 189, 217-221 (2010)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2010-01325-9

Regular Article

Diffusion of water in nano-porous polyamide membranes: Quasielastic neutron scattering study

¹ Solid State Physics Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai 400 085, India
² Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute, Bhavnagar, India
³ Laboratory for Neutron Scattering, ETHZ & PSI, Villigen PSI, Switzerland

^a e-mail: mukhop@barc.gov.in

Received: 1 September 2010
Revised: 14 September 2010
Published online: 12 November 2010

Abstract

Dynamics of water sorbed in a reverse osmosis polyamide membrane (ROPM) as studied by quasielastic neutron scattering (QENS) is reported here. The trimesoylchloride-m-phenylene diamine based ROPM is synthesized by interfacial polymerization technique. QENS data indicates that translational motion of water confined in ROPM gets modified compared to bulk water whereas rotational motion remains unaltered. Translational motion of water in ROPM is found to follow random jump diffusion with lower diffusivity compared to bulk water. Translational diffusivity does not show the Arrhenius behaviour.