Abstract
Thermal sensation, which is the conversion of a temperature stimulus into a biological response, is the basis of the fundamental physiological processes that occur ubiquitously in all organisms from bacteria to mammals. Significant efforts have been devoted to fabricating artificial membranes that can mimic the delicate functions of nature; however, the design of a bionic thermometer remains in its infancy. Herein, we report a nanofluidic membrane based on an ionic covalent organic framework (COF) that is capable of intelligently monitoring temperature variations and expressing it in the form of continuous potential differences. The high density of the charged sites present in the sub-nanochannels renders superior permselectivity to the resulting nanofluidic system, leading to a high thermosensation sensitivity of 1.27 mV K−1, thereby outperforming any known natural system. The potential applicability of the developed system is illustrated by its excellent tolerance toward a broad range of salt concentrations, wide working temperatures, synchronous response to temperature stimulation, and long-term ultrastability. Therefore, our study pioneers a way to explore COFs for mimicking the sophisticated signaling system observed in the nature.
Highlights
Thermal sensation, which is the conversion of a temperature stimulus into a biological response, is the basis of the fundamental physiological processes that occur ubiquitously in all organisms from bacteria to mammals
Acetic acid and triaminoguanidine hydrochloride (Tag) dissolved in an aqueous phase were physically separated from the Tp dispersed in a mixture of ethyl acetate and mesitylene to allow the formation of covalent organic framework (COF) active layers exclusively on the polyacrylonitrile (PAN) support (TpTagCOF/PAN), which was placed at the liquid–liquid interface using a homemade diffusion cell (Fig. 2c, and Supplementary Fig. 1 and 2)
The use of PAN as a support is mainly based on the considerations that it is flexible, which can increase the operability of the resulting membrane, and it is hydrophilic and negatively charged, which can lower the transmembrane energy of cations
Summary
Thermal sensation, which is the conversion of a temperature stimulus into a biological response, is the basis of the fundamental physiological processes that occur ubiquitously in all organisms from bacteria to mammals. A potential difference could be established in the steady state at the interphase, which can be recorded under open-circuit conditions (Voc, Eq 1), where cα; Tα and cβ; Tβ are the concentrations and temperatures of the two solutions, and t+, R, and F are the transference number of the cation, gas constant, and Faraday constant, respectively. According to this equation, the thermoelectric response to temperature changes can be principally expressed as a continuum of changes in a potential, which is similar to what is observed in nature. COFs can serve as an ideal platform for the construction of a membrane-scale nanofluidic device (Fig. 1)[38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46]
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