Surprisingly Fast Transport in Carbon Nanotube Membranes Could Advance Human Health
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Surprisingly Fast Transport in Carbon Nanotube Membranes Could Advance Human Health:
[...] In a surprising discovery published in the journal Advanced Science, LLNL researchers found that carbon nanotube pores (graphite cylinders with diameters thousands of times smaller than a human hair) might provide a solution to the permeability vs. selectivity tradeoff. When using a concentration gradient as a driving force, small ions, such as potassium, chloride, and sodium, were found to diffuse through these tiny pores more than an order of magnitude faster than when moving in bulk solution.
"This result was unexpected because the general consensus in the literature is that diffusion rates in pores of this diameter should be equal to, or below what we see in bulk," said Steven Buchsbaum, lead author of the paper.
"Our finding enriches the number of exciting and often poorly understood nanofluidic phenomena recently discovered in a-few-nanometer confinement," added Francesco Fornasiero, the principal investigator on the project.
The team believes this work has significant implications in several technology areas. Membranes employing carbon nanotubes as transport channels could enable ultra-rapid hemodialysis processes that would greatly reduce treatment time. Similarly, cost and time for purifying proteins and other biomolecules as well as recovering valuable products from electrolyte solutions could be drastically reduced. Enhanced ion transport in small graphitic pores could enable supercapacitors with high power density even at pore sizes closely approaching those of the ions.
LLNL - Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Journal Reference:
Steven F. Buchsbaum, Melinda L. Jue, April M. Sawvel, et al. Fast Permeation of Small Ions in Carbon Nanotubes [open], Advanced Science (DOI: 10.1002/advs.202001802)
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