Assessing the potential of quartz crystal microbalance to estimate water vapor transfer in micrometric size cellulose particles

This study aims at assessing the use of a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) coupled with an adsorption system to measure water vapor transfer properties in micrometric size cellulose particles. This apparatus allows measuring successfully water vapor sorption kinetics at successive relative humidity (RH) steps on a dispersion of individual micrometric size cellulose particles (1 μg) with a total acquisition duration of the order of one hour. Apparent diffusivity and water uptake at equilibrium were estimated at each step of RH by considering two different particle geometries in mass transfer modeling, i.e. sphere or finite cylinder, based on the results obtained from image analysis. Water vapor diffusivity values varied from 2.4 × 10−14 m2 s−1 to 4.2 × 10−12 m2 s−1 over the tested RH range (0-80%) whatever the model used. A finite cylinder or spherical geometry could be used equally for diffusivity identification for a particle size aspect ratio lower than 2.