Foglia, Fabrizia;
Frick, Bernhard;
Nania, Manuela;
Livingston, Andrew G;
Cabral, João T;
(2022)
Multimodal confined water dynamics in reverse osmosis polyamide membranes.
Nature Communications
, 13
, Article 2809. 10.1038/s41467-022-30555-6.
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Abstract
While polyamide (PA) membranes are widespread in water purification and desalination by reverse osmosis, a molecular-level understanding of the dynamics of both confined water and polymer matrix remains elusive. Despite the dense hierarchical structure of PA membranes formed by interfacial polymerization, previous studies suggest that water diffusion remains largely unchanged with respect to bulk water. Here, we employ neutron spectroscopy to investigate PA membranes under precise hydration conditions, and a series of isotopic contrasts, to elucidate water transport and polymer relaxation, spanning ps-ns timescales, and Å-nm lengthscales. We experimentally resolve, for the first time, the multimodal diffusive nature of water in PA membranes: in addition to (slowed down) translational jump-diffusion, we observe a long-range and a localized mode, whose geometry and timescales we quantify. The PA matrix is also found to exhibit rotational relaxations commensurate with the nanoscale confinement observed in water diffusion. This comprehensive 'diffusion map' can anchor molecular and nanoscale simulations, and enable the predictive design of PA membranes with tuneable performance.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Multimodal confined water dynamics in reverse osmosis polyamide membranes |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41467-022-30555-6 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-30555-6 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/. |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Chemistry UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10149499 |
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