FAIRBORN — A Wright State University researcher believes she may have found a tiny solution to an increasingly big problem.

With the help of students and colleagues, Sharmila Mukhopadhyay, director of Wright State’s Center for Nano-Scale Multifunctional Materials, has developed what the university calls “near molecular-sized nano brushes.”

The brushes are structures made up of thousands of what the university calls “tiny, jellyfish-like strands.” Coat the bristles with the right materials, and the bristles can cleanse water of dangerous pollutants, killing bacteria and destroying harmful chemicals.

While many Americans take clean water for granted, it’s an increasingly urgent matter in developing nations and can even be an issue in rural America during natural disasters.

“It’s a big issue everywhere,” Mukhopadhyay said.

Nanomaterials are incredibly tiny, often far smaller than the width of a human hair. Jessica Ravine, president of nanomaterials producer Buckeye Composites — which has a home in Kettering’s National Composite Center — said that in terms of size, a nanometer is to a meter what a child’s marble is to planet Earth.

Ravine has worked with Mukhopadhyay, calling her expertise in nanomaterials “impressive.”

The professor has worked with Ravine to improve bucky paper’s conductivity of electricity, a characteristic that could be developed to protect airplanes during thunderstorms, Ravine said.

And Buckeye Composites had collaborated with Mukhopadhyay on several Ohio Third Frontier projects in the past, she said.

The nanomaterials offer the possibility that expensive municipal water systems could in time be replaced with less expensive and smaller water-purification systems that rely not on purifying chemicals but on nanomaterials. The water could be filtered through nanomaterials or water systems could place the materials in polluted water, Mukhopadhyay said.

Mukhopadhyay and her team are also considering other uses, such as storage of hydrogen, cleansing polluted gases and helping control temperature variation.

But water purification uses are perhaps the most promising at this time, she said.

Mukhopadhyay has worked with Columbus firm MetaMateria Technologies LLC and three other firms in a proposal that received nearly $1 million in Ohio Third Frontier funding, Wright State said.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2390 or tgnau@DaytonDailyNews.com.