Eur. Phys. J. E (2021) 44: 136
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/s10189-021-00136-4

Topical Review – Flowing Matter

Structure and dynamics of nanoconfined water and aqueous solutions

¹ Departmento de Física de la Materia Condensada & Instituto de Nanociencia y Nanotecnología (CNEA-CONICET), Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica, B1650LWP, Buenos Aires, Argentina
² INQUISUR, Departamento de Química, Universidad Nacional del Sur (UNS)-CONICET, 8000, Bahía Blanca, Argentina
³ Institute of Physics, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, 91501-970, Porto Alegre, Brazil
⁴ Department of Physics, Institute of Physics and Mathematics, 96050-500, Pelotas, RS, Brazil
⁵ Secció de Física Estadística i Interdisciplinària – Departament de Física de la Matèria Condensada, Universitat de Barcelona & Institut de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (IN2UB), Universitat de Barcelona, 08028, Barcelona, Spain
⁶ Dipartimento di Matematica e Fisica, Università degli Studi Roma Tre, 00146, Roma, Italy
⁷ Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics Section (CMSP), The International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, Italy
⁸ Institute of Systems and Physical Biology, Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China
⁹ Instituto de Química Física de los Materiales, Medio Ambiente y Energía (INQUIMAE-CONICET), Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
¹⁰ Escuela de Ciencia y Tecnología, Universidad Nacional de General San Martín, San Martín, Buenos Aires, Argentina
¹¹ Biomedical Engineering Department, Northwestern University, Evanston, USA

^a hrcorti@tandar.cnea.gov.ar

Received: 27 August 2021
Accepted: 6 October 2021
Published online: 15 November 2021

Abstract

This review is devoted to discussing recent progress on the structure, thermodynamic, reactivity, and dynamics of water and aqueous systems confined within different types of nanopores, synthetic and biological. Currently, this is a branch of water science that has attracted enormous attention of researchers from different fields interested to extend the understanding of the anomalous properties of bulk water to the nanoscopic domain. From a fundamental perspective, the interactions of water and solutes with a confining surface dramatically modify the liquid’s structure and, consequently, both its thermodynamical and dynamical behaviors, breaking the validity of the classical thermodynamic and phenomenological description of the transport properties of aqueous systems. Additionally, man-made nanopores and porous materials have emerged as promising solutions to challenging problems such as water purification, biosensing, nanofluidic logic and gating, and energy storage and conversion, while aquaporin, ion channels, and nuclear pore complex nanopores regulate many biological functions such as the conduction of water, the generation of action potentials, and the storage of genetic material. In this work, the more recent experimental and molecular simulations advances in this exciting and rapidly evolving field will be reported and critically discussed.