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Updated: Nov 8, 2025

Controlling the Size, Shape and Stability of Supramolecular Polymers in Water
Published on: August 2, 2012
Strong Enhancement of Nanoconfined Water Mobility by a Structure Breaking Salt
Naresh C Osti1, Bishnu Prasad Thapaliya2,3, Sheng Dai2,3
1Neutron Scattering Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, United States.
Abstract:
For the majority of the water present on earth, the two most important factors influencing its behavior are confinement, in either inorganic or organic matrixes, and the presence of solutes. Here, we investigate the effect of confinement in 3 nm pores on water diffusivity in aqueous solutions with archetypical solutes, a structure making (kosmotrope) NaCl and a structure breaking (chaotrope) KCl, up to 1.0 M in concentration. The water diffusivity in bulk aqueous solutions in such a concentration range is known to decrease very slightly in the presence of NaCl and increase very slightly in the presence of KCl. However, here we observe the water diffusivity in confined H2O-KCl increases by a factor of 2 compared to the pure water diffusivity in the same confinement. This unusually strong cumulative effect of confinement and a structure breaking additive may have profound implications for the mobility and transport of aqueous species in nature.
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