3D flexible water channel: stretchability of nanoscale water bridge

Abstract

Artificial water channels can contribute to a better understanding of natural water channels and offer a highly selective, advanced conductance system. Most studies use nanotubes, however it is difficult to fabricate a flexible structure, and the nanosized diameter brings nanoconfinement effects, and nanotube toxicity arouses biosafety concerns. In this paper, we use an electric field to restrain the water molecules to form a nanoscale water bridge as an artificial water channel to connect a separated solid plate by molecular dynamics simulations. We observe strong 3D flexible stretchability in the water bridge, maintaining a variable length and an arbitrary angle for a considerably long time. The stretching of the water bridge enables it to be polarized at an arbitrary angle and the stretchability is linearly dependent upon the polarization strength. More interestingly, we show the possibility of establishing complex water networks, e.g., triangle, rectangle, hexagon, and tetrahedron-tetrahedron water networks. Our results may help realize structurally flexible and environmentally friendly water channels for lab-on-a-chip applications in nanofluidics.

Capillary transport in particulate porous media at low levels of saturation

“…The overall comparison is looking very good considering that there were practically no tting parameters involved. We note that an interesting example of a purely one-dimensional system has been recently analyzed in [46]. We believe that on average, our results should be fully applicable to that setup as well.…”

“…Consider a oneparameter group of transformations of the variables t → t, u → q u and x → m x, which is used to obtain self-similar solutions, in particular the Barenblatt selfsimilar distribution proles; > 0. One can immediately see that the moving boundary value problem (46) is not invariant under the group of transformations, that is one can not determine such q and m at u 0 = 0 so that to obtain an invariant equation with invariant boundary conditions ( 47) and ( 48). This conclusion is consistent with our numerical simulations, where no global self-similar behaviour of the distribution proles s(x, t) with time has been identied so far.…”

Surface Permeability of Particulate Porous Media

“…Note, experimentally, the setup of many beads coupled by liquid bridges is often used in microfluidics to create flexible water channels 14 . If the radius of curvature of the particle chain is much larger than the particle size, the transport through such a microfluidic system should be defined by the permeability of a single particle, relationship (16), if the particle shape can be approximated by a sphere.…”

Reversed Currents in Charged Liquid Bridges

“…Such water bridges can even be stretched and used for flexible nanofluids [17]. Water bridges exhibit viscoelastic behavior with the possibility to measure its Young modulus [18].…”