{"id":233452,"date":"2026-03-17T02:25:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T07:25:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/first-of-its-kind-ion-pump-developed-for-seawater-desalination-energy-and-biomedical-applications"},"modified":"2026-03-17T02:25:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T07:25:22","slug":"first-of-its-kind-ion-pump-developed-for-seawater-desalination-energy-and-biomedical-applications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/first-of-its-kind-ion-pump-developed-for-seawater-desalination-energy-and-biomedical-applications","title":{"rendered":"First-of-its-kind ion pump developed for seawater desalination, energy and biomedical applications"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/first-of-its-kind-ion-pump-developed-for-seawater-desalination-energy-and-biomedical-applications2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, Israel\u2019s Tel Aviv University and other institutions have developed a first-of-its-kind membrane through which charged molecules pass using nothing more than a rapidly switching low-voltage signal. This \u201cratchet-based ion pump\u201d has no moving parts and requires no chemical reactions.<\/p>\n<p>The device opens the door to advances in water desalination, lithium ion harvesting from seawater, heavy-metal removal from drinking water, battery recycling and various biomedical applications. The team\u2019s findings are outlined in a paper published recently in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41563-026-02511-y\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Nature Materials<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, Israel\u2019s Tel Aviv University and other institutions have developed a first-of-its-kind membrane through which charged molecules pass using nothing more than a rapidly switching low-voltage signal. This \u201cratchet-based ion pump\u201d has no moving parts and requires no chemical reactions. The device opens the door to advances in water [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}