When a change in concentration is generated, solvent molecules migrate to mitigate this difference in concentration, due to osmosis.
In their new paper, published in a renown journal Physical Review Letters, our Ph.D. student Alain Boldini and Professor Maurizio Porfiri theoretically demonstrated the possibility of an inversion of the motion of solvent molecules in charged membranes, opposite to osmosis.
This phenomenon could potentially be exploited in microfluidics fabrication and in the study of biological membranes.
Read the paper “Inversion of Solvent Migration in Charged Membranes” here.
The research was also covered by APS Physics.
Image credit: Alain Boldini, Anna Sawulska, and Maurizio Porfiri.