Scientists Create Slippery Nanopores That Supercharge Blue Energy
# Scientists Create Slippery Nanopores That Supercharge Blue Energy Scientists at EPFL have found a way to significantly boost "blue energy" — electricity generated from mixing saltwater and freshwater — by coating nanopores with lipid molecules that create a friction-reducing water layer. The ...
Scientists Create Slippery Nanopores That Supercharge Blue Energy
Scientists at EPFL have found a way to significantly boost "blue energy" — electricity generated from mixing saltwater and freshwater — by coating nanopores with lipid molecules that create a friction-reducing water layer.
The breakthrough, published in Nature Energy, enabled ions to pass through much more efficiently while keeping the process highly selective. Their prototype membrane produced about two to three times more power than current technologies.
Osmotic energy, often called blue energy, works by harnessing the voltage that arises when ions from saltwater pass through an ion-selective membrane toward water with lower salt concentration. The problem is that membranes designed to allow ions to pass through quickly often lose the ability to separate charges effectively, and maintaining structural durability has proven difficult.
The team from EPFL's Laboratory for Nanoscale Biology, led by Aleksandra Radenovic, coated nanopores with tiny lipid bubbles called liposomes. Normally, these nanopores allow very slow but very precise ion flow. With the lipid lubrication, selected ions slip through with much less friction.
"Our work brings together the strengths of two main approaches to osmotic energy harvesting: polymer membranes, which inspire our high-porosity architecture; and nanofluidic devices, which we use to define highly charged nanopores," according to Radenovic.
The team fabricated a membrane containing 1,000 lipid-coated nanopores arranged in a hexagonal pattern. When tested under conditions replicating natural salt concentrations of seawater and river water, their device exhibited a power density of roughly 15 watts per square meter — two to three times greater than existing polymer membrane technologies.
"By showing how precise control over nanopore geometry and surface properties can fundamentally reshape ion transport, our study moves blue-energy research beyond performance testing and into a true design era," according to researcher Tzu-Heng Chen.
