Alessandro Siria
2D Materials in Water Applications Symposium Dresden, Germany 11 & 12 Apr 2024
Title: 2D Materials for efficient voltage induced reverse osmosis
Short Biography:
Alessandro Siria is a research director at CNRS (National Center for
Scientific Research) and a professor at the ENS (École Normale
Supérieure). He has obtained an ERC (European Research Council)
Starting Grant and an ERC Proof of Concept, and is also a co-founder of
four startups resulting from his team's research. His research activity is
at the interface between nano science and soft matter. He develops new
experimental techniques and systems to probe the fundamental
behaviour of matter at the small scale. His research activity has been
focused on two main fields: nanofluidics and nanomechanics. For both
domains, he has introduced novel and original experimental setups that
allowed me to investigate exotic behaviors of matter.
Abstract:
The emergence of new nanomaterials and the nanofluidics perspective
functionalities has recently unveiled unconventional mechanism of
nanoscale water and ion transport at nanoscale. One of the most
surprising feature of nanofluidic transport is the appearance of strongly
non-linear transport in asymmetric channels with striking analogies to
what observed in electronic diodes. We propose a novel and versatile
approach for water purification, by which fresh water is driven across a
composite material under an external electric field. This mechanism
relies on a rectified (electro-) osmotic transport across an asymmetric
membrane made by the assembly of a macroporous and a microporous
layers. Water flow is driven within the macroporous part, while the
selectivity versus the targeted ion is achieved within the microporous
layer with properly chosen pore size.Examples of direct application such
as micropollutant ions extraction and desalination are demonstrated.
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