Privileged Planet: water in nanopores (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, July 25, 2024, 21:48 (121 days ago) @ David Turell

Water's strange dynamics:

https://phys.org/news/2024-07-confined-electric-reveals-dielectric-response.html

"When water gets inside nanopores with sizes below 10 nanometers, new physics emerge: new phases of ice were observed and ultrafast proton transport was measured. Confined water also plays a role in biology, where aquaporins cross cellular membranes to allow specific transport of water and other small molecules through nanometer-scale channels.

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"The authors have found an increase in the ability of water to screen electric fields applied along the axis of the one-dimensional nanopore. This enhancement arises from a longer-range alignment of water dipoles under confinement relative to the bulk fluid, leading even to the formation of exotic phases of water (ferroelectric ices) under extreme confinement.

"'It's necessary to understand the ability of the confined liquid to screen electric fields and how this varies from the bulk environment," said LLNL scientist Marcos Calegari Andrade, lead author of the paper. "An improved understanding of the dielectric response of confined water is important not only for advancing separation technologies but also for other emerging applications, such as energy storage and conversion."

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"'Our work reveals peculiar impacts of 1-D hydrophobic nanoconfinement, not only on the dielectric constant, but also on the electronic structure of water that cannot be observed with simulations based on conventional parametric force fields," Calegari Andrade said."

Comment: this characteristic helps drive dissolved material across membranes pores. Hydrogen and oxygen were early formed elements in preparation for life to appear.