A collaborative study involving DPU investigates how the architecture of porous materials affects water diffusion.
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Water Transport in Nanoporous Structures
Published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, the study entitled “Manipulation of the Nanoarchitecture of Porous Media Determines Water Mobility: NMR Experiments using Metal–Organic Framework (MOF)-Functionalized Track-Etched Solid-State Nanochannels (SSNs)” examines water diffusion in solid-state nanochannels functionalised with the metal–organic framework UiO-66.
Co-authored by Asst. Prof. Dr. Juan A. Allegretto from LiST-DPU, the study uses single-sided nuclear magnetic resonance (SS-NMR) to compare two fabrication strategies that produce distinct porous environments.
Pore Architecture Determines Water Mobility
The results show that different synthetic approaches can create distinct pore architectures even when based on the same material. These structural differences directly influence water mobility: one approach produces larger gaps within the microporous network, resulting in bottlenecks and more tortuous diffusion pathways.
The other approach creates better-connected structures in which water mobility varies with pH, consistent with the influence of surface charge.
The findings highlight the importance of pore connectivity and structural organisation in transport processes within nanofluidic membranes based on metal–organic frameworks.
Read the full publication:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.6c16040
