Nanofluidics

Orateur : Prof. Lyédric BOQCUET (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris)

Abstract : « There is plenty of room at the bottom ».This visionary foresight of R. Feynman, introduced during a lecture at Caltech in 1959, was at the root of numerous scientific and technological developments, taking benefit of the "strange phenomena" occurring at the smallest scales. There remains however a lot to explore, in particular in the context of fluids at the nanoscales and their specific transport properties. Superfast flows in carbon nanotubes, hydrodynamic slippage, nanobubble superstability, ... are the most striking phenomena that have been unveiled over the last few years and some of them are still awaiting an explanation. Furthermore the great efficiency of biological nanopores, such as aquaporins, in terms of permeability or selectivity is definitely a great motivation to foster research in this direction. How to reach such efficiency in artificial nano-systems, and build new devices taking benefit of the strange transport behavior of fluids at nanoscales is still an open question. This lecture will introduce the various phenomena which enters fluid dynamics in nanoscale pores. This involves interfacial dynamics, slippage effects, the limits of validity of continuum transport, electro-hydrodynamics and osmotic transport, fluctuations, etc.... In particular I will discuss several examples of theoretical and experimental studies of transport inside nanochannels, showing how nanoscales can be harnessed to obtain new transport properties and the case of flows inside nanotubes will be specifically discussed.

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