ABSTRACT
For ows through carbon nanotubes, slip can be signi cant (Holt et al., 2006; Majumder et al., 2005), with ow rates 10’s or 100’s of times that which would occur if the slip were absent. (See
omas and McGaughey (2008) for a critique of the above two experimental works. See also Berezhkovskii and Hummer (2002) and Hummer et al. (2004) for molecular dynamics simulations of nanotube slip.) Flows through carbon nanotubes and other microand nanoscale channels o er possibilities for separating and sorting solute molecules by size and other properties (Brady-Estévez et al., 2008; Corry, 2008; Formasiero et al., 2008). However, the commercial use of small pores is limited by their extremely high ow resistance. For example, semi-permeable membranes have been used for many years as a means of desalination, but it takes a huge amount of energy to push a city’s volume of water through microscopic desalinating pores. e presence of slip and concomitant reduced drag o er the prospect of dramatically reduced energy costs that may make a wide range of separation processes economically feasible (Eijkel, 2007; Eijkel and van den Berg, 2005; Gad-el-Hak, 1999; Sholl and Johnson, 2006; Urbakh et al., 2004).
