Complete steric exclusion of ions and proton transport through confined monolayer water

It has long been an aspirational goal to create artificial structures that allow fast permeation of water but reject even the smallest hydrated ions, replicating the feat achieved by nature in protein channels (e.g., aquaporins). Despite recent progress in creating nanoscale pores and capillaries, t...

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Published inScience (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 363; no. 6423; pp. 145 - 148
Main Authors Gopinadhan, K, Hu, S, Esfandiar, A, Lozada-Hidalgo, M, Wang, F C, Yang, Q, Tyurnina, A V, Keerthi, A, Radha, B, Geim, A K
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States The American Association for the Advancement of Science 11.01.2019
Subjects
Aquaporins
Capillaries
Channel pores
Channels
Crystals
Graphene
Ions
Monolayers
Penetration
Proteins
Protons
Replication
Spacer
Transport
Water
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Summary:It has long been an aspirational goal to create artificial structures that allow fast permeation of water but reject even the smallest hydrated ions, replicating the feat achieved by nature in protein channels (e.g., aquaporins). Despite recent progress in creating nanoscale pores and capillaries, these structures still remain distinctly larger than protein channels. We report capillaries made by effectively extracting one atomic plane from bulk crystals, which leaves a two-dimensional slit of a few angstroms in height. Water moves through these capillaries with little resistance, whereas no permeation could be detected even for such small ions as Na and Cl Only protons (H ) can diffuse through monolayer water inside the capillaries. These observations improve our understanding of molecular transport at the atomic scale.
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ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.aau6771