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8 July 2024

Unraveling the behavior of liquids at the nanoscale

Unraveling the behavior of liquids at the nanoscale

A research breakthrough in nanofluidics, made by researchers from CICECO-Aveiro Institute of Materials and the Departments of Chemistry and Physics at UAveiro, has been published in Nature Communications. This is the first paper with the all authors belonging to CICECO for many years.

Nanoscale liquid flows are essential for various biological processes and underpin a wide range of nanofluidic applications. It is generally assumed that at the nanoscale, liquid flows are predominantly laminar and uniaxial. However, the researchers from CICECO have detected previously unknown helical water flows inside self-assembling peptide nanochannels coexisting with conventional axial flows.

This discovery provides a novel fundamental insight into the behavior of liquids at the nanoscale and paves the way for new approaches to controlling chemical reactions, creating advanced lab-on-a-chip and organ-on-a-chip devices, and many other applications.

The authors used solid-state NMR spectroscopy, computer simulation, and dynamic vapor sorption measurements to analyze these flows and found that they are independent of each other, immiscible, and propagate along the nanochannel with different speeds. The helical trajectory of the flow originates from the screw-like distribution of ionic groups in the channel walls, while its flux can be controlled by external water vapor pressure.

The results suggest that similar helical flows of water or other molecules may occur in other types of nanochannels, such as zeolites, covalent organic and metal-organic frameworks, and porous organic polymers.

Detection of helical water flows in sub-nanometer channels
Zelenovskii, P; Soares, M; Bornes, C; Marin-Montesinos, I; Sardo, M; Kopyl, S; Kholkin, A; Mafra, L; Figueiredo, F. Nature Communications
15, 5516 (2024)

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G1 - Porous Materials and Nanosystems G2 - Photonic, Electronic and Magnetic Materials G3 - Electrochemical Materials, Interfaces and Coatings

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