Capillary condensation in one-dimensional irregular confinement.

A lattice-gas model with heterogeneity is developed for the description of fluid condensation in finite sized one-dimensional pores of arbitrary shape. Mapping to the random-field Ising model allows an exact solution of the model to be obtained at zero-temperature, reproducing the experimentally observed dependence of the amount of fluid adsorbed in the pore on external pressure. It is demonstrated that the disorder controls the sorption for long pores and can result in H2-type hysteresis. Finite-temperature Metropolis dynamics simulations support analytical findings in the limit of low temperatures. The proposed framework is viewed as a fundamental building block of the theory of capillary condensation necessary for reliable structural analysis of complex porous media from adsorption-desorption data.