Fluctuations of the number of neighboring pores and appearance of multiple nonergodic states of a nonwetting liquid confined in a disordered nanoporous medium

Multiple nonergodic states have been observed for nonwetting liquid in the Fluka100 C18 and Fluka100 C8 porous media with broad pore size distributions having different widths. The dispersion transition where the volume of confined liquid depends critically on the degree of filling of the porous medium and temperature is observed in the temperature range 293-343 K under study for the Fluka100 C18 porous medium and is not observed for the Fluka100 C8 porous medium. A mechanism of the appearance of multiple nonergodic states has been proposed. It has been shown that fluctuations of the number of the nearest neighbors in the disordered system are mainly responsible for the features of confinement of nonwetting liquid and nonergodic states of nonwetting liquid in the nanoporous media under investigation with wide pore size distributions.