Adsorption and permeation events in molecular diffusion

TL;DR

This paper uses an encounter-based approach to analyze the statistics of adsorption and permeation events in molecular diffusion within various confining geometries, providing fundamental insights with practical applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel encounter-based method to quantify adsorption and permeation events in molecular diffusion across different geometries.

Findings

Derived statistical measures for adsorption and permeation events.

Analyzed flat boundary and spherical confinement cases.

Discussed potential applications of the results.

Abstract

How many times a diffusing molecule can permeate across a membrane or be adsorbed on a substrate? We employ the encounter-based approach to find the statistics of adsorption or permeation events for molecular diffusion in a general confining medium. Various features of these statistics are illustrated for two practically relevant cases of a flat boundary and a spherical confinement. Some applications of these fundamental results are discussed.