Title
Water Flow in Silica Nanopores Coated by Carbon Nanotubes from a Wetting Translucency Perspective
Date Issued
24 October 2019
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Publisher(s)
American Chemical Society
Abstract
Nearly frictionless water transport makes carbon nanotubes promising materials for use as conduits in nanofluidic applications. Here, we conduct molecular dynamics simulations of water flow within amorphous silica nanopores coated by a (39,39) single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT). Our atomistic models describe the interaction between water and pore walls based on two possible scenarios, translucency and opacity to wetting of a SWCNT. Simulation results indicate that the SWCNT coating enhances water flow through silica pores ca. 10 times compared to predictions from the classical Hagen-Poiseuille relation. By varying the strength of the water-pore interaction, we study the relationship between surface wettability and hydrodynamic slippage. We observe an increase in the slip length for higher values of water contact angle. Moreover, cases with SWCNT opacity and translucency to wetting display a substantial difference in the computed slippage, showing that the water contact angle is not the only factor that determines the slip boundary condition under nanoconfinement. We attribute this disparity to the corrugation of the potential energy landscape at the inner pore wall. The present study provides a theoretical framework for the use of carbon nanotube-based coatings in designing more efficient nanofluidic conduits.
Start page
25635
End page
25642
Volume
123
Issue
42
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Nano-procesos
Oceanografía, Hidrología, Recursos hídricos
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85073146882
Source
Journal of Physical Chemistry C
ISSN of the container
1932-7447
Sponsor(s)
E.W. thanks financial support from Centro CRHIAM Conicyt/Fondap Project 15130015 (Chile). This research was partially funded by CONICYT under FONDECYT project no. 11130559. The authors thank computational support from the Departments of Physics and Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark and from National Laboratory for High Performance Computing (NLHPC). H.A.Z. acknowledges support from the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María through a DGIIP research grant.
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus