ANR JCJC : COWAT Project

Water is by far the most studied and important fluid in our environment. However, water confined at the nanoscale remains poorly understood, despite being central to many fields. In the COWAT project, we will investigate the properties of water confined at the nanoscale in a single carbon nanotube with a very small diameter (< 1.4 nm).

We will take advantage of the extreme sensitivity of carbon nanotube mechanical resonators (link), on the order of a single proton, to characterize both the hydrogen bond network and the flow properties of water confined at the nanoscale (link). We will address several questions that are currently open in the scientific community, including the origin of ultra-fast water transport in carbon nanotubes with very small diameters.