With the miniaturization of flow devices, it becomes hard to pump fluid across nanoconfined geometries, where the large surface volume ratio presents a step dissipative barrier to fluid motion. Though progress in moving material inside the carbon naotubes has been made, it is difficult to develop a suitable nanoscale water pump device which can make a continuous unidirectional water flow on nanoscale.15,16 Conventionally, transporting water directionally through a nanochannel is driven by an osmotic or hydrostatic pressure gradient.17 Such a method would involve a large reservoir of solution on one side of the nanochannel to produce the pressure gradient. In additional, chemical and thermal gradients are also applied to drive fluid through nanochannels.18,19 Recently, different from the conversional methods, various novel blueprints for a nanopump have been proposed.20−22 In 1999, Kral et al. ́proposed a laser-driven pump for atomic transport through carbon nanotubes,20 while Insepov et al., using numerical simulations, showed that the gas inside the carbon nanotube can be driven by the Rayleigh surface wave.2 The experimentsthat followed have confirmed that nanoparticles inside the hollow core of multiwalled carbon nanotubes can be driven in the direction of the electron flow.22 Later, Duan et al. proposed
an energy pump for activating axial water molecules flow inside a carbon nanotube by setting up a small portion of the initially twisted wall of the carbon nanotube.21 Interestingly, the theoretical work of Kral and Shapiro showed that an electric ́ current is generated along a metallic SWNT immersed in a liquid flowing along them,23 which was demonstrated by the following experimental work of Ghosh et al.24 Inspired by this result, Sun et al. also demonstrated experimentally that a water flow can also be driven by the applied current on a single walled carbon nanotube (SWNT).25 In 2008, Joseph and Aluru’s simulation results showed that confined water in carbon nanotubes can be driven by static electric field.26 However, Bonthuis’ work showed that static electric fields do not induce fluid flow in the planar geometry.27 Later, Huang et al. proposed a design for pumping water molecules in a singlewalled carbon nanotube in the presence of a linearly gradient electric field.28 Very recently, Klaus F. Rinne et al. demonstrated pumping of water through a carbon nanotube by time-dependent electric fields by using molecular dynamics simulations.29 In our previous work, we have proposed a novel nanoscale water pump (or nanoenergy conversion devices) for converting electrical power into the transport of the chargeneutral water molecules.6,15 A continuous unidirectional water flow can be attained by a ratchet-like mechanism without osmotic pressure or hydrostatic drop.