Surface Tension Gradient-Driven Transport of Water/Ethanol Interface Confined in a Carbon Nanotube
Résumé
Recently, it has been shown that the water/ethanol interface between two molecular layers can be stabilized locally near the hydrophobic graphene solid surface. This stabilization is attributed to the preferential hydrophobic adsorp- tion between the methyl groups of the ethanol molecules and the carbon atoms of the graphene. This involves a first adsorbed molecular layer of ethanol followed by a second layer of water, with hydrogen bonds connecting the two layers. In this work, we investigate the behavior of the water/ethanol interface confined situation through a carbon nanotube. Starting from different initial conditions, we observed a core-shell organization with ethanol located at the CNT surface and water positioned at the center of the pore, as well as the complete expul- sion of water from the pore. By calculating the local radial and axial surface tensions, we highlighted that a surface tension gradient drives the transport of water and ethanol through the CNT.