From radial to unidirectional water pumping in zeta-potential modulated Nafion nanostructures
Esplandiu Egido, Maria José (Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia)
Reguera, David (Universitat de Barcelona. Institut de Recerca en Sistemes Complexos)
Romero-Guzmán, Daniel (Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Bioingeniería, Biomateriales y Nanomedicina)
Gallardo-Moreno, Amparo M. (Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Bioingeniería, Biomateriales y Nanomedicina)
Fraxedas, Jordi (Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia)

Date:	2022
Abstract:	Chemically propelled micropumps are promising wireless systems to autonomously drive fluid flows for many applications. However, many of these systems are activated by nocuous chemical fuels, cannot operate at high salt concentrations, or have difficulty for controlling flow directionality. In this work we report on a self-driven polymer micropump fueled by salt which can trigger both radial and unidirectional fluid flows. The micropump is based on the cation-exchanger Nafion, which produces chemical gradients and local electric fields capable to trigger interfacial electroosmotic flows. Unidirectional pumping is predicted by simulations and achieved experimentally by nanostructuring Nafion into microarrays with a fine tune modulation of surrounding surface zeta potentials. Nafion micropumps work in a wide range of salt concentrations, are reusable, and can be fueled by different salt cations. We demonstrate that they work with the common water-contaminant cadmium, using the own capture of this ion as fuel to drive fluid pumping. Thus, this system has potential for efficient and fast water purification strategies for environmental remediation. Unidirectional Nafion pumps also hold promise for effective analyte delivery or preconcentration for (bio)sensing assays.
Grants:	Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad FIS2015-67837 Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad PGC2018-095032-B-100 Agencia Estatal de Investigación RTI2018-096862-B-I00 Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad SEV-2017-0706
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Fluids ; Polymers ; Fluidics ; Surface patterning
Published in:	Nature communications, Vol. 13 (May 2022) , art. 2812, ISSN 2041-1723

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30554-7
PMID: 35589767

10 p, 1.7 MB

The record appears in these collections:
Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Experimental sciences > Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2)
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles