Project description
Water’s hydrogen-bond structure under a new microscope
Water is the most abundant liquid on Earth. Essential for life, it is part of nearly every single biological, geological and chemical process. The structure and dynamics of the hydrogen-bonding network in water remains under study. The EU-funded AngstroCAP project will develop new capillary devices to investigate the structure and dynamics of water. These devices are in a lab-on-a-chip type configuration with angstrom-scale channels and atomically smooth walls. The project will assemble capillaries of a few microns in length, by sandwiching two blocks of layered crystals, separated by an atomically thin 2D-crystal spacer. Inside these channels, researchers will image water condensation along with simultaneous structure analysis by spectroscopy under in-situ (temperature, pressure) environments.
Objective
I will construct and apply next generation capillary devices as an exciting experimental platform to enable ground-breaking investigation of structure and dynamics of water at the ultimate molecular scale. These devices are in a lab-on-a-chip type configuration with angstrom-scale channels and atomically smooth walls. I am making them by scrupulous assembly tools in a controllable and reproducible fashion and they are extremely stable. Myself and my team will assemble capillaries of a few microns in length, by sandwiching two blocks of layered crystals, e.g. mica, graphite, boron nitride, separated by an atomically thin 2D-crystal spacer. Inside these channels, we will image water condensation along with simultaneous structure analysis by spectroscopy, under in-situ (temperature, pressure) environments. Another key aim of the project is to produce 2D slit-like pores on a large scale by slicing the pre-made 2D capillaries using sharp diamond knives, and explore their applications in size selective separation and biomolecular translocation. This ambitious research program is only possible because of my extensive angstrom-scale fabrication expertise, coupled with world leading fabrication capabilities at the University of Manchester.
Objectives
1: To utilize angstrom-scale capillaries constructed out of two-dimensional (2D) materials as a versatile platform for studying confinement effect on structure and dynamics of water.
2: To construct new types of angstrom-scale 2D-pores from these capillaries for studying size-selective molecular separation, biomolecular sequencing and translocation.
The project will have a lasting impact in understanding what the angstrom-scale confinement offers in terms of active control of molecular transport. Such confinement effects are efficiently utilized in various natural systems (e.g. protein channels) and the results could even aid in designing elementary building blocks of stimuli responsive artificial fluidic circuitry
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- engineering and technologyother engineering and technologiesmicrotechnologylab on a chip
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteins
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrymetalloids
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesopticsspectroscopy
You need to log in or register to use this function
We are sorry... an unexpected error occurred during execution.
You need to be authenticated. Your session might have expired.
Thank you for your feedback. You will soon receive an email to confirm the submission. If you have selected to be notified about the reporting status, you will also be contacted when the reporting status will change.
Programme(s)
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-STG - Starting GrantHost institution
M13 9PL Manchester
United Kingdom