Water Transport through Carbon Nanotubes with the Radial Breathing Mode

Qi-Lin Zhang, Wei-Zhou Jiang, Jian Liu, Ren-De Miao, and Nan Sheng

Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 254501 – Published 21 June 2013

Abstract

Molecular dynamics simulations are performed to investigate the water permeation across the single-walled carbon nanotube with the radial breathing mode (RBM) vibration. It is found that the RBM can play a significant role in breaking the hydrogen bonds of the water chain, accordingly increasing the net flux dramatically, and reducing drastically the average number of water molecules inside the tube with the frequency ranging from 5000 to 11 000 GHz, while far away from this frequency region the transport properties of water molecules are almost unaffected by the RBM. This phenomenon can be understood as the resonant response of the water molecule chain to the RBM. Our findings are expected to be helpful for the design of high-flux nanochannels and the understanding of biological activities, especially the water channelling.

Received 20 September 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.254501

Authors & Affiliations

Qi-Lin Zhang^1,2, Wei-Zhou Jiang^1,*, Jian Liu³, Ren-De Miao⁴, and Nan Sheng³

¹Department of Physics, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China
²Department of Mathematics and Physics, Anhui Polytechnic University, Anhui 241000, China
³Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201800, China
⁴Institute of Science, PLA University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 211101, China