Dramatic pressure-induced slowdown and the soft glassy rheology of water at 2D material interface
Guilhem Mariette, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Jean Comtet · arXiv: 2610.28254v1 · Summary page
Why cover this story this week?
Water that slows under pressure
Water squeezed against a material surface need not behave like the familiar liquid in a pipe. Using tuning-fork-based atomic force microscopy, researchers measured how molecularly confined water responds as shear takes it beyond the gentle, linear-response regime. Its behavior resembled that of soft glassy materials: resistance and relaxation depended strongly on the rate of deformation. Pressure slowed the dynamics markedly, with relaxation times extending into the microsecond range and varying with the interface material.
A nonlinear model that allows shear to accelerate the water’s dynamics captured the measured response. That resemblance does not mean the water has become an ordinary glass; it means concepts developed for slowly relaxing, disordered materials can help describe its flow. The preprint suggests that choosing surfaces and pressure could provide ways to tune nanoscale fluid transport, rather than simply making ever-smaller versions of conventional plumbing.
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