Ultrafast Diameter-Dependent Water Evaporation from Nanopores

Evaporation from nanopores plays an important role in various natural and industrial processes that require efficient heat and mass transfer. The ultimate performance of nanopore-evaporation-based processes is dictated by evaporation kinetics at the liquid–vapor interface, which has yet to be experimentally studied down to the single nanopore level. Here we report unambiguous measurements of kinetically limited intense evaporation from individual hydrophilic nanopores with both hydrophilic and hydrophobic top outer surfaces at 22 °C using nanochannel-connected nanopore devices. Our results show that the evaporation fluxes of nanopores with hydrophilic outer surfaces show a strong diameter dependence with an exponent of nearly −1.5, reaching up to 11-fold of the maximum theoretical predication provided by the classical Hertz–Knudsen relation at a pore diameter of 27 nm. Differently, the evaporation fluxes of nanopores with hydrophobic outer surfaces show a different diameter dependence with an exponent of −0.66, achieving 66% of the maximum theoretical predication at a pore diameter of 28 nm. We discover that the ultrafast diameter-dependent evaporation from nanopores with hydrophilic outer surfaces mainly stems from evaporating water thin films outside of the nanopores. In contrast, the diameter-dependent evaporation from nanopores with hydrophobic outer surfaces is governed by evaporation kinetics inside the nanopores, which indicates that the evaporation coefficient varies in different nanoscale confinements, possibly due to surface-charge-induced concentration changes of hydronium ions. This study enhances our understanding of evaporation at the nanoscale and demonstrates great potential of evaporation from nanopores.