Related papers: Ionic exclusion phase transition in neutral and we…
Using a variational field theory, we show that an electrolyte confined to a neutral cylindrical nanopore traversing a low dielectric membrane exhibits a first-order ionic liquid-vapor pseudo-phase-transition from an ionic-penetration…
Partitioning and transport of water and small solutes into and through nanopores is important to a variety of chemical and biological processes and applications. Here we study the partitioning of positive ions of increasing size into the…
The recent measurement of a very low dielectric constant, $\epsilon$, of water confined in nanometric slit pores leads us to reconsider the physical basis of ion partitioning into nanopores. For confined ions in chemical equilibrium with a…
Ionic transport in nanopores or nanochannels is key to many cellular processes and is now being explored as a method for DNA/polymer sequencing and detection. Although apparently simple in its scope, the study of ionic dynamics in confined…
We consider the translocation of a neutral (uncharged) nanoparticle through a pore in a thin membrane with constant surface charge density. If the concomitant Debye screening layer is sufficiently thin, the resulting forces experienced by…
The permeation, rejection, and transport of electrolytes in water-filled nanopores are critical to ion current gating and desalinalion processes in synthetic porous membranes and the functions of biological ion channels. Mile the effects of…
The ionic selectivity of nanopores is crucial for the energy conversion based on nanoporous membranes. It can be significantly affected by various parameters of nanopores and the applied fields driving ions through porous membranes. Here,…
Nanoporous membranes, leveraging their high-throughput characteristics, have been widely applied in fields such as molecular separation and energy conversion. Due to interpore interactions, besides the applied voltage and solution…
Porous graphene has high mechanical strength and atomic layer thickness, which make it a promising material for material separation and biomolecule sensing. Electrostatic interactions between charges in aqueous solution are a kind of strong…
Ionic Coulomb blockade in nanopores is a phenomenon that shares some similarities but also differences with its electronic counterpart. Here, we investigate extensively this phenomenon using all-atom molecular dynamics of ionic transport…
A variational theory is developed to study electrolyte solutions, composed of interacting point-like ions in a solvent, in the presence of dielectric discontinuities and charges at the boundaries. Three important and non-linear…
Ionic transport in nanopores is a fundamentally and technologically important problem in view of its occurrence in biological processes and its impact on novel DNA sequencing applications. Using microscopic calculations, here we show that…
In the recent experiments [Chmiola et al, Science 313, 1760 (2006); Largeot et al, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 130, 2730 (2008)] an anomalous increase of the capacitance with a decrease of the pore size of a carbon-based porous electric double-layer…
We report Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations of a generic hydrophobic nanopore connecting two reservoirs which are initially at different Na+ concentrations, as in a biological cell. The nanopore is impermeable to water under equilibrium…
Fundamental understanding of ionic transport at the nanoscale is essential for developing biosensors based on nanopore technology and new generation high-performance nanofiltration membranes for separation and purification applications. We…
Membranes consist of pores and the walls of these pores are often charged. In contact with an aqueous solution, the pores fill with water and ions migrate from solution into the pores until chemical equilibrium is reached. The distribution…
Ion transport through charged nanopores is commonly interpreted in terms of electrical double layer structure, leading to the expectation of cation-selective conduction in negatively charged pores. This picture can break down for…
A model of a finite cylindrical ion channel through a phospholipid membrane of width $L$ separating two electrolyte reservoirs is studied. Analytical solution of the Poisson equation is obtained for an arbitrary distribution of ions inside…
Ion transport through narrow water--filled channels is impeded by a high electrostatic barrier. The latter originates from the large ratio of the dielectric constants of the water and a surrounding media. We show that ``doping'', i.e.…
Using the 2D Ising model we study the generic properties of nucleation in hydrophobic nanopores. To explore the pathways to nucleation of a spin-up phase from a metastable spin-down phase we perform umbrella sampling and transition path…