They are called Carbon Nano Tubes or CNT for short. CTN are hollow structures made of carbon atoms in a unique arrangement with pores that can exclude salt from seawater.
Excisting water purification technologies can greatly enhance from the development of membranes with specialized pores which try to copy Nature's own extremely efficient and water selective biological proteins.
"We found that carbon nanotubes with diameters smaller than a nanometer bear a key structural feature that enables enhanced transport. The narrow hydrophobic channel forces water to translocate in a single-file arrangement, a phenomenon similar to that found in the most efficient biological water transporters," said Ramya Tunuguntla, co-author of a manuscript covering this topic in depth.
The big breakthrough achieved by the team was to use smaller-diameter nanotubes than they did before and this delivered the desired results.
"These studies revealed the details of the water transport mechanism and showed that rational manipulation of these parameters can enhance pore efficiency," said Meni Wanunu, a physics professor at Northeastern University and co-author on the study.
"Carbon nanotubes are a unique platform for studying molecular transport and nanofluidics," said Alex Noy, LLNL principal investigator on the Carbon Nano Tubes project and a senior author on the paper.
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The nanotubes are more than 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. Their inner surface being super smooth is what makes for their exceptionally high water permeability, while the miniscule pore size blocks larger salt ions.
The manuscript referred to in this article appears in the Aug. 24 edition of Science.
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