Despite the abundancy of sea water there are 663 million people that lack access to safe drinking water. This is due to excessive energy consumption and hence cost coupled to desalination of sea water into drinking water. We use biomimicry to develop an energy-efficient desalination filter which is based on aquaporins, water-channeling proteins that transport water across the cell membrane. We have stabilized aquaporins in lipid bilayers supported on mesoporous silica and are now aiming for improving the system in terms of robustness. We are doing so by introducing silica in the bilayer surrounding the aquaporins. We aim to study the composition of silicified aquaporin-containing supported PC bilayers using NR to find if silicification alters the conformation of aquaporins, which possess both transmembrane domains and extracellular domains.