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Massive radius-dependent flow slippage in carbon nanotubes

Nature volume 537, pages 210–213 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

Measurements and simulations have found that water moves through carbon nanotubes at exceptionally high rates owing to nearly frictionless interfaces1,2,3,4. These observations have stimulated interest in nanotube-based membranes for applications including desalination, nano-filtration and energy harvesting5,6,7,8,9,10, yet the exact mechanisms of water transport inside the nanotubes and at the water–carbon interface continue to be debated11,12 because existing theories do not provide a satisfactory explanation for the limited number of experimental results available so far13. This lack of experimental results arises because, even though controlled and systematic studies have explored transport through individual nanotubes7,8,9,14,15,16,17, none has met the considerable technical challenge of unambiguously measuring the permeability of a single nanotube11. Here we show that the pressure-driven flow rate through individual nanotubes can be determined with unprecedented sensitivity and without dyes from the hydrodynamics of water jets as they emerge from single nanotubes into a surrounding fluid. Our measurements reveal unexpectedly large and radius-dependent surface slippage in carbon nanotubes, and no slippage in boron nitride nanotubes that are crystallographically similar to carbon nanotubes, but electronically different. This pronounced contrast between the two systems must originate from subtle differences in the atomic-scale details of their solid–liquid interfaces, illustrating that nanofluidics is the frontier at which the continuum picture of fluid mechanics meets the atomic nature of matter.

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Figure 1: Nanojet experimental set-up.
Figure 2: Measurement of Landau–Squire flows driven from nanotubes.
Figure 3: Permeability and slip length of individual CNTs and BNNTs.

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Acknowledgements

L.B. and A.S. thank U. Keyser for discussions. E.S., A.N., S.M. and A.S. acknowledge funding from the European Union’s H2020 Framework Programme/ERC Starting Grant agreement number 637748 — NanoSOFT. L.B. and D.S. acknowledge support from the European Union’s FP7 Framework Programme/ERC Advanced Grant Micromegas. S.M. acknowledges funding from a J.-P. Aguilar grant. L.B. acknowledges funding from a PSL chair of excellence. We acknowledge funding from ANR project BlueEnergy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire de Physique Statistique, Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL Research University, Paris Cedex 05, 75005, France

    Eleonora Secchi, Sophie Marbach, Antoine Niguès, Derek Stein, Alessandro Siria & Lydéric Bocquet

  2. Physics Department, Brown University, Providence, 02912, Rhode Island, USA

    Derek Stein

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  1. Eleonora Secchi
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  2. Sophie Marbach
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  4. Derek Stein
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  5. Alessandro Siria
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  6. Lydéric Bocquet
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Contributions

L.B. and A.S. conceived and directed the research. A.N. and A.S. designed and fabricated the nanotube devices. E.S and D.S. designed the fluidic cell. E.S. performed the measurements. The data were analysed by E.S., S.M. and L.B.; S.M. conducted the numerical analysis with input from the other authors. All authors contributed to the scientific discussions and the preparation of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Alessandro Siria or Lydéric Bocquet.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Reviewer Information

Nature thanks J. Eijkel and A. Michaelides for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

This file contains Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Figures 1-29, Supplementary Tables 1-3 and additional references (see Contents for more details). (PDF 8018 kb)

Insertion and sealing procedure of a BNNT

This video shows the insertion and sealing procedure of a BNNT inside a nanocapillary. (MP4 24252 kb)

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Secchi, E., Marbach, S., Niguès, A. et al. Massive radius-dependent flow slippage in carbon nanotubes. Nature 537, 210–213 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature19315

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