The project is a Competitive Internal Research Award (CIRA) funded by the Khalifa University (United Arab Emirates).

In this project, the objective of the solid-state NMR group at INN NCSRD is the development and application of advanced nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) methods in the study of water transport through carbon nanotubes (CNTs). 

Studies of water dynamics in hydrophobic nanochannels are of great interdisciplinary interest for a broad range of applications such as water treatment technologies, drug delivery, intracellular solute transport control, and energy applications. One of the most suitable methods for investigating molecular dynamics in nanoconfinement is the application of NMR diffusion experiments in the strong stray field gradient (SFG) of superconductive magnets.In the context of the present project, ¹H NMR diffusion experiments are carried out in the stray field of a 4.7 T Bruker superconducting magnet providing a G=34.7 T/m constant magnetic field gradient at ¹H NMR Larmor frequency 101.168 MHz. The aim of these measurements is to investigate the nanofluidic properties of water and IL polar molecules confined in either hydrophobic or hydrophilic functionalized CNTs in the temperature range 100 K to 400 K. For this purpose, we have developed a new time-resolved diffusion NMR method in which diffusion is recorded in different relaxation windows thus allowing to resolve at a molecular level multiple modes of diffusion in complex multiphasic nanofluidic processes.