Nanofluidics

The college of engineering at Boston University has embarked on a bold new strategic plan that will pursue excellence and impact along six convergent and collaborative research themes:  (1) Intelligent, Autonomous and Secure Systems, (2) Synthetic Biology, Tissue Engineering and Mechanobiology, (3) Energy, Sustainability and Climate, (4) Materials by Design (5) Photonics and Optical Systems, and (6) Neuroengineering, Neuroinformatics, and Neuroscience.

In this paper, we put water flow under scrutiny to report radial distributions of water viscosity within hydrophobic and hydrophilic nanotubes as functions of the water-nanotube interactions, surface wettability, and nanotube size using a proposed hybrid continuum-molecular mechanics. Based on the computed viscosity data, phase diagram of the phase transitions of confined water in nanotubes is developed. It is revealed that water exhibits different multiphase structures, and the formation of one of these structures depends on many parameters.