Separating individual diffusion coefficients in ethanol-water mixtures

Molecular diffusion is of high importance in the fields of biology, chemistry, pharmacy and material sciences. We are interested in exploiting the novel materials of supramolecular gels based on low molecular weight gelators towards drug delivery, and have recently performed an underpinning experiment on LET (RB 1610311) in which we have investigated the intriguingly complex pure solvent mixture of fully protiated water-ethanol in terms of its self-diffusion on the picosecond time scale across the complete range of mixing ratios.These first systematic experimental QENS data has just been published in PCCP. In the current proposal, we would like to investigate partially deuterated solvent mixtures using polarised neutrons on LET in order to resolve the individual diffusion coefficients of ethanol and water within the solvent mixture.