Jeudi 16 Mars 2023 à 10h :
Soufiane Abdelghani-Idrissi et Lucie Ries
Resonant nanofluidic transport for efficient Voltage Induced Reverse Osmosis
Soufiane Abdelghani–Idrissi, Lucie Ries, Alessandro Siria, Lydéric Bocquet*
Laboratoire de Physique de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure, ENS, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université de Paris, Paris, France
* Corresponding author email: Lyderic.bocquet@ens.fr
Abstract:
Worldwide access to fresh water is one of the key challenges of our modern society. Desalination of salted water is an energetically costly process usually carried out by reverse osmosis (RO). Unsalted water sources such as rivers face the problem of the presence of micropollutants, which are present even after conventional treatments. In order to avoid the use of high pressure inherent to RO we report here an novel concept for water filtration using non–linear nanofluidic transport through composite membranes made of advanced nanomaterials. A rectified electro–osmotic water flow is induced through the nanostructure of the material under the solicitation of an external sinusoidal electric field. The water flow is mediated by the inherent surface charge at the liquid–solid interface, while the selectivity of the composite allows the filtration of salts and micropollutants. We show that the generated EO flow present a resonant behavior which allow to reach high flow rate Our work significantly expands possibilities of water filtration by showing a macroscopic use of Shockley diode behaviors in nanofluidic transport.