Interplay between hydrophilicity and surface barriers on water transport in zeolite membranes.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27694935.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms12762 and PMC identifier 5477497.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
A comprehensive understanding of molecular transport within nanoporous materials remains elusive in a broad variety of engineering and biomedical applications. Here, experiments and atomistic simulations are synergically used to elucidate the non-trivial interplay between nanopore hydrophilicity and surface barriers on the overall water transport through zeolite crystals. At these nanometre-length scales, these results highlight the dominating effect of surface imperfections with reduced permeability on the overall water transport. A simple diffusion resistance model is shown to be sufficient to capture the effects of both intracrystalline and surface diffusion resistances, thus properly linking simulation to experimental evidence. This work suggests that future experimental work should focus on eliminating/overcoming these surface imperfections, which promise an order of magnitude improvement in permeability.