Water transport through a two-dimensional nanoporous material: is there a relationship between water flux and surface tension?

In this work, the relationship between the water flux through nanoporous two-dimensional hexagonal Boron Nitride (h-BN) and surface tension was investigated from equilibrium and pressure-driven molecular dynamics simulations by considering the most popular rigid water models. From the surface tension calculation, the contact angle was evaluated and compared with the experiment. We exhibit a correlation between the water flux through nanoporous h-BN predicted by the various water models and the surface tension as a result of the difference in the interfacial energy.