Abstract
The influences of the diameter (size) of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and the temperature on the viscosity of water confined in SWCNTs are investigated by an "Eyring-MD" (molecular dynamics) method. The results suggest that the relative viscosity of the confined water increases with increasing diameter and temperature, whereas the size-dependent trend of the relative viscosity is almost independent of the temperature. Based on the computational results, a fitting formula is proposed to calculate the size- and temperature- dependent water viscosity, which is useful for the computation on the nanoflow. To demonstrate the rationality of the calculated relative viscosity, the relative amount of the hydrogen bonds of water confined in SWCNTs is also computed. The results of the relative amount of the hydrogen bonds exhibit similar profiles with the curves of the relative viscosity. The present results should be instructive for understanding the coupling effect of the size and the temperature at the nanoscale.
Highlights
Water conduction through single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) has been paid much attention in recent years [1,2,3,4,5]
The previous studies have revealed that the flow behavior of water at the nanoscale strongly depends on the characteristic length of nanochannel [9,10,11,12], which implies that the classical continuum theory for the macroscopic fluid may be no longer applicable for the fluid confined in nanochannels
The relative viscosity increases with increasing temperature, and the increasing extent nonlinearly varies with the diameter of SWCNTs
Summary
Water conduction through single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) has been paid much attention in recent years [1,2,3,4,5]. It is a significant topic for studying and designing the nanodevices such as the nanochannel for drug delivery and the membrane for water desalination [6,7,8]. The previous studies have revealed that the flow behavior of water at the nanoscale strongly depends on the characteristic length of nanochannel [9,10,11,12], which implies that the classical continuum theory for the macroscopic fluid may be no longer applicable for the fluid confined in nanochannels. The previous results have identified that the water viscosity relies on the temperature and the characteristic length of the nanochannel [9,12,13,14,15]. The viscosity of fluids in nanoconfinement on a scale comparable to the molecular diameter is seldom explored owing to the extremely
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