Barriers to Superfast Water Transport in Carbon Nanotube Membranes

Carbon nanotube (CNT) membranes hold the promise of extraordinary fast water transport for applications such as energy efficient filtration and molecular level drug delivery. However, experiments and computations have reported flow rate enhancements over continuum hydrodynamics that contradict each...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nano letters 2013-05, Vol.13 (5), p.1910-1914
Main Authors: Walther, Jens H, Ritos, Konstantinos, Cruz-Chu, Eduardo R, Megaridis, Constantine M, Koumoutsakos, Petros
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Biotechnology
Carbon nanotubes
Continuums
Cross-disciplinary physics: materials science
rheology
Drug delivery systems
Exact sciences and technology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Hydrodynamics
Materials science
Membranes
Methods. Procedures. Technologies
Micrometers
Molecular dynamics
Molecular Dynamics Simulation
Nanocrystalline materials
Nanoscale materials and structures: fabrication and characterization
Nanostructure
Nanotubes
Nanotubes, Carbon - chemistry
Others
Physics
Surface Properties
Transport
Various methods and equipments
Water - chemistry
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Summary:Carbon nanotube (CNT) membranes hold the promise of extraordinary fast water transport for applications such as energy efficient filtration and molecular level drug delivery. However, experiments and computations have reported flow rate enhancements over continuum hydrodynamics that contradict each other by orders of magnitude. We perform large scale molecular dynamics simulations emulating for the first time the micrometer thick CNTs membranes used in experiments. We find transport enhancement rates that are length dependent due to entrance and exit losses but asymptote to 2 orders of magnitude over the continuum predictions. These rates are far below those reported experimentally. The results suggest that the reported superfast water transport rates cannot be attributed to interactions of water with pristine CNTs alone.
ISSN:1530-6984
1530-6992
DOI:10.1021/nl304000k