Intramolecular Diffusive Motion in Alkane Monolayers Studied by High-Resolution Quasielastic Neutron Scattering and Molecular Dynamics Simulations

The study of intramolecular diffusive motion in alkane monolayers via high-resolution quasielastic neutron scattering (QNS) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations was presented. The understudied diffusive motions were associated with the creation and annihilation of gauche defects occurring on a time scale of ∼0.4-4 ns. The high-energy-resolution QNS study provided evidence for the observation of relatively slow diffusive motions. The study demonstrated the QNS as a complementary technique to nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) for studying the conformational dynamics in molecular monolayers on a nanosecond time scale.