Large osmotic energy harvesting from functionalized conical nanopore suitable for membrane applications

• DOI: 10.1016/j.memsci.2017.09.008
• Publication Date: 2017-09-05T07:46:41Z
• Authors: Sébastien Balme; Tianji Ma; Emmanuel Balanzat; Jean-Marc Janot
• Keywords: Nanopore; Osmotic power; Osmosis

Abstract The direct capture of energy from salinity gradient is limited by low energetic efficiency. Here we propose to investigate an original membrane for capture of osmotic energy based conical track-etched nanopore. In order to improve the surface charge at pH 7, the nanopore was functionalized with chitosan / poly(acrylic acid) self-assembly. We observed for single nanopore a large osmotic current around 0.6 nA for a concentration gradient c,Tip/c,Base = 1000. This corresponds to energy around 25 pW per nanopore. Then, we demonstrate that this result can be upscale for a multi-pore membrane in the case of a low density of nanopores.