Water transport through a misaligned bilayer nanoporous graphene amplified by terahertz waves.

Abstract

Nanoporous graphene (NPG) serves as an efficient platform for water transport, offering broad application potential in areas such as seawater desalination and energy harvesting. However, pore misalignment in multilayer graphene structures often significantly hinders transport efficiency, thereby limiting practical applications. To enhance transport in misaligned NPG systems, this study employs molecular dynamics simulations to systematically investigate water transport in bilayer NPGs with varying pore offsets, with particular emphasis on the regulatory roles of terahertz (THz) waves. The results reveal that for a given field strength, the water flux apparently decreases in large pore offsets if the field frequency is small; however, increasing field frequency results in an order water flux enhancement. Furthermore, with the systematic change in field frequency, the water flux has an interesting maximum variation with distinct peak location and height for different field strengths. We also analyze other parameters such as water translocation time, occupancy number, and hydrogen bond number, etc, which supports the unusual water transport dynamics under THz-wave modulations. This work provides a novel strategy for enhancing water transport efficiency in misaligned NPG structures and offers both theoretical insight and practical guidance for the design of novel nanofluidic pumps.

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