For many engineers and scientists, nature is the world's greatest muse. They seek to better understand natural processes that have evolved over millions of years, mimic them in ways that can benefit society and sometimes even improve on them.
An international, interdisciplinary team of researchers that includes engineers from The University of Austin has found a way to replicate a natural process that moves ラーメンベット 退会 between cells, with a goal of improving how we filter out salt and other elements and molecules to create clean ラーメンベット 退会 while consuming less energy.
In a new paper published today in Nature Nanotechnology, researchers created a molecule-sized ラーメンベット 退会 transport channel that can carry ラーメンベット 退会 between cells while excluding protons and undesired molecules. These channels mimic the ラーメンベット 退会 transport functions of proteins in our bodies known as aquaporins. In our cells, uncontrolled transport of protons alongside ラーメンベット 退会 can be harmful because they can change the pH of cells, potentially disrupting or killing them.
This is the first instance of an artificial nanometer-sized channel that can truly emulate the key ラーメンベット 退会 transport features of these biological ラーメンベット 退会 channels. And it could improve the ability of membranes to efficiently filter out unwanted molecules and elements, while speeding up ラーメンベット 退会 transport, making it cheaper to create a clean supply.
"It copies nature, but it does so by breaking the rules nature has established," said Manish Kumar, an assistant professor in the ラーメンベット 禁止ゲーム of Engineering's Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering. "These channels facilitate speedy transport of molecules you want, like ラーメンベット 退会, and block those you don't want, like salt."
The research team's artificial ラーメンベット 退会 channels can perform the same functions as aquaporins, which are crucial at a larger level for desalination, ラーメンベット 退会 purification and other processes for separating molecules. And they do so while transporting ラーメンベット 退会 2.5 times faster compared to aquaporins.
The artificial channels are three nanometers in width by three nanometers in length. If densely packed into the correct size membrane, the channels can pass roughly 80 kilograms of ラーメンベット 退会 per second per square meter of membrane, while rejecting salts and protons at rates much higher than current commercial desalination membranes are capable of.
"These artificial channels in essence solve the critical technical challenges of only allowing ラーメンベット 退会 molecules to pass while excluding other solutes like salt and protons," said professor Huaqiang Zeng of Department of Chemistry at Hainan University and the Institute of Advanced Synthesis at Northwestern Polytechnical University in China. "Their extraordinary ラーメンベット 退会 transportation speed and the fact that these channels allow for simpler membrane fabrication suggest they will become a crucial component of next-generation membranes for producing clean ラーメンベット 退会 to address severe scarcity facing human beings in this century."
Aquaporin-based channels are so small that they only allow a single molecule of ラーメンベット 退会 through at a time, like a single-lane road. A unique structural feature in these new channels is a series of folds in the channels that create additional "lanes," so to speak, allowing ラーメンベット 退会 molecules to be transported faster.
"You're going from a country road to a highway in terms of ラーメンベット 退会 transport speed, while still keeping out other things by putting little bumps in the road," said Aleksei Aksimentiev, a professor of biological physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who collaborated on the research.
Kumar took a class taught by Aksimentiev on the physics of nanomachines while studying for his Ph.D. in environmental ラーメンベット 退会 at the University of Illinois. The course, he said, was about as challenging as it comes, and he still refers back to his notes from the class years later.
They worked together on a paper when Kumar was a student. And then when he became a professor, Aksimentiev helped him with simulation work on another paper. For years now, they have been collaborating on the study of ラーメンベット 退会 transport channels.
The interdisciplinary team features faculty and researchers from around the world in physics, chemical ラーメンベット 退会, pharmacology and more. Researchers come from UT Austin, University of Illinois, Harvard Medical School, Hainan University and Northwestern Polytechnical University in China and NanoBio Lab in Singapore.
Zeng is the corresponding author on the paper. Kumar led the testing portion of the project and Aksimentiev led the simulation work.
Earlier this year, Kumar teamed with Penn State University researchers on a discovery that shed new light on how traditional ラーメンベット 退会 desalination membranes work. They found that uniformity throughout the membrane speeds up transporting ラーメンベット 退会 and improves the process of filtering out salt.
This new work, Kumar says, takes that concept to another level. These channels can only be one size to fit the desired ラーメンベット 退会 molecules through while squeezing out other unwanted molecules.
Going forward, the team plans to use these artificial ラーメンベット 退会 channels to fabricate next-generation reverse-osmosis membranes to convert seawater to drinkable ラーメンベット 退会.
