Water transportation across narrow channel of nanometer dimension

Since the discovery of the carbon nanotube and aquaporin, the study of the transportation of water across nanochannels has become one of the hot subjects. When the radius of a nanochannel is only about one nanometer or a little larger, water confined in those nanoscale channels usually exhibits dynamics different from those in bulk system, such as the wet–dry transition due to the confinement, concerted hydrogen-bond orientations and flipping, concerted motion of water molecules, and strong interactions with external charges. Those dynamics correlate with the unique behavior of the water transportation across the channels, such as the extra-high permeability, excellent on–off gating behavior with response to the external mechanical and electrical signals and noises, enhancement by structure outside the channel, directional transportation driven by charges close to a channel or electric field. In this article, we review some of the recent progress on the study of the water molecules inside those narrow nanochannels.