Blowing bubbles from a nanopore
The following contribution comes from Jan Hoh – a Professor of Physiology at Hopkins, an invited speaker to BME in December, and a potential future collaborator. Jan sent his thoughts on why it is impossible to get flow through our membranes in a wet-dry format. The bottom line is that surface tension theory says that blowing water bubbles from a nanomembrane would probably require over 100 ATM of pressure. Lowering the surface tension by a factor of 10 (at most) with ethanol or surfactants is not going to overcome this problem.
I looked into decreasing surface tension with temperature. For water, it unfortunately does not change much before 100C (from about 0.073 at room temp to 0.06)
Water Surface Tension
Full details here (Eötvös rule):
Eötvös rule