(314g) Forming Water-Wire Networks and Achieving Aquaporin-like Water Permeability and Water/Salt Selectivity Using Artificial Water Channels

Achieving both high water permeability and water/salt selectivity is of great interest in desalination membrane research field and, inspired by outstanding water transport property of biological water channel aquaporins, artificial water channel system has emerged as promising platform for desalination membrane developments. However, the water transport performance of current artificial water channels is still unsatisfactory compared to aquaporins. Here, we present unprecedented artificial water channel structure that enables to achieve billions of water molecule conduction per second per channel architecture that is comparable to aquaporins. This outstanding single channel permeability could be achieved through spontaneous channel cluster formation inside lipid bilayer membranes and water-wire network formation. Also, quantitative molecular transport study demonstrated ~10⁹ water/ion selectivity property of this channel structure, of which value exceeds the selectivity requirements for desalination membrane (~16,000) developments by several orders of magnitude. Consequently, this cluster-forming channel structure is expected as highly promising pore architectures that would bring significant stride for desalination membrane developments.