Faraday Horizon Prize for n-Aqua

For discoveries revealing how the structure and dynamics of water are transformed under nanoscale confinement and at low-dimensional interfaces.

The n-AQUA team (a collaboration between the Max Planck Institute, CNRS, and the University of Cambridge) studies what happens to water when it is confined in spaces so small that only a few molecules can fit across. At this scale, water no longer behaves like the familiar liquid we encounter every day. It can flow in unexpected ways, reorganise its internal structure, and respond very differently to its surroundings.

To understand this, the team combine three complementary approaches. They measure how water moves through extremely small channels, use advanced laser-based methods to probe how water molecules vibrate and organise at interfaces, and develop theoretical models that describe these behaviours at the atomic level. Bringing these perspectives together directly links how water flows with how it is structured and how its molecules interact collectively.

The team's key advance is showing that water transport at this scale is not controlled only by the size of the channel, but also by how groups of water molecules move together and interact with the material around them. This means that water flow in nanoscopic systems can, in principle, be tuned by controlling these collective molecular motions.

This changes how scientists can think about water at small scales. Instead of treating it as a simple fluid, it can be viewed as a dynamic system whose behaviour can be understood and potentially controlled. In the long term, this could lead to more efficient water purification and desalination technologies, improved energy systems that rely on proton transport, and new materials that precisely regulate how water moves through them.