Fundamental study of ionics in single-digit confinement

The formation of ion pairs is not taken into account by the continuous models of the aqueous solution transport in single-digit nanoconfinement. This is really important since we found recently that it leads to metastable phase formation and to pore clogging. The goal of this project is to characterize the transport of electrolyte solutions having ions of various size and different ability to form ion pairs in silica nanochannels with a gap of 1, 2, 3 and 5 nm using hard X-ray reflectivity. Coupled to ongoing atomistic modelling, these results will give reliable information such as the electron density profiles and the ion distributions, enabling a better fundamental understanding of the ions and water transport in single-digit confinement.