AI Article Synopsis
- Osmosis is essential for cellular functions and water purification technologies, and membranes with single-atom thickness present a promising avenue for research and application.
- The study uses molecular dynamics simulations to analyze water and ion transport through carbon nanotube and porous graphene membranes, revealing that carbon nanotubes significantly outperform porous graphene in salt rejection during osmosis.
- Findings indicate that altering the chemical properties of the membranes can optimize performance, particularly in small-sized pores where organized water flow enhances transport efficiency, paving the way for advanced osmosis membrane designs.
Article Abstract
Osmosis is the key process in establishing versatile functions of cellular systems and enabling clean-water harvesting technologies. Membranes with single-atom thickness not only hold great promises in approaching the ultimate limit of these functions, but also offer an ideal test-bed to explore the underlying physical mechanisms. In this work, we explore diffusive and osmotic transport of water and ions through carbon nanotube and porous graphene based membranes by performing molecular dynamics simulations. Our comparative study shows that the cylindrical confinement in carbon nanotubes offers much higher salt rejection at similar permeability in osmosis compared to porous graphene. Moreover, chemical functionalization of the pores modulates the membrane performance by its steric and electrostatic nature, especially at small-size pores due to the fact that the optimal transport is achieved by ordered water transport near pore edges. These findings lay the ground for the ultimate design of forward osmosis membranes with optimized performance trade-off, given the capability of nano-engineering nanostructures by their geometry and chemistry.
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| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4453129 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep10597 | DOI Listing |
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