Metallicity-Dependent Ultrafast Water Transport in Carbon Nanotubes.
Small
; 16(25): e1907575, 2020 06.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-32432833
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with hydrophobic and atomically smooth inner channels are promising for building ultrahigh-flux nanofluidic platforms for energy harvesting, health monitoring, and water purification. Conventional wisdom is that nanoconfinement effects determine water transport in CNTs. Here, using full-atomistic molecular dynamics simulations, it is shown that water transport behavior in CNTs strongly correlates with the electronic properties of single-walled CNTs (metallic (met) vs semiconducting (s/c)), which is as dominant as the effect of nanoconfinement. Three pairs of CNTs (i.e., (8,8)met , 10.85 Å vs (9,7)s/c , 10.88 Å; (9,8)s/c , 11.53 Å vs (10,7)met , 11.59 Å; and (9,9)met , 12.20 Å vs (10,8)s/c , 12.23 Å) are used to investigate the roles of diameter and metallicity. Specifically, the (9,8)s/c can restrict the hydrogen-bonding-mediated structuring of water and give the highest reduction in carbon-water interaction energy, providing an extraordinarily high water flux, around 250 times that of the commercial reverse osmosis membranes and approximately fourfold higher than the flux of the state-of-the-art boron nitrate nanotubes. Further, the high performance of (9,8)s/c is also reproducible when embedded in lipid bilayers as synthetic high-water flux porins. Given the increasing availability of high-purity CNTs, these findings provide valuable guides for realizing novel CNT-enhanced nanofluidic systems.
Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Base de datos:
MEDLINE
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Small
Asunto de la revista:
ENGENHARIA BIOMEDICA
Año:
2020
Tipo del documento:
Article
País de afiliación:
Singapur
Pais de publicación:
Alemania