Related papers: Beyond steric selectivity of ions using angstrom-s…
It has been an ultimate but seemingly distant goal of nanofluidics to controllably fabricate capillaries with dimensions approaching the size of small ions and water molecules. We report ion transport through ultimately narrow slits that…
Ion channels are specific proteins present in the membranes of living cells. They control the flow of specific ions through a cell, initiated by an ion channel's electrochemical gradient. In doing so, they control important physiological…
Memristors that mimic brain functions are crucial for energy-efficient neuromorphic devices. Ion channels that emulate biological synapses are still in the early stages of development, especially the tunability of memory states. Here, we…
Angstrom-scale fluidic channels are ubiquitous in nature, and play an important role in regulating cellular traffic, signaling, and responding to stimuli. Synthetic channels are now a reality with the emergence of several cutting-edge…
Ion channels are membrane proteins responsible for an enormous range of biological functions. Ion selectivity and permeation are based on simple laws of physics and chemistry. Ion channels are therefore ideal candidates for physical…
Nanometre-scale pores and capillaries have long been studied because of their importance in many natural phenomena and their use in numerous applications. A more recent development is the ability to fabricate artificial capillaries with…
Ion channels form pores across the lipid bilayer, selectively allowing inorganic ions to cross the membrane down their electrochemical gradient. While the study of ion desolvation free-energies have attracted much attention, the role of…
Membranes selective to ions of the same charge are increasingly sought for wastewater processing and valuable element recovery. However, while narrow channels are known to be essential, other membrane parameters remain difficult to identify…
Understanding ion-transport under molecular confinement is essential for developing next-generation energy technologies, where ionic motion often occurs within nanoscale or angstrom-scale channels. In this study, we use the model system of…
Recently, it has been suggested that ion channel selectivity filter may exhibit quantum coherence, which may be appropriate to explain ion selection and conduction processes. Potassium channels play a vital role in many physiological…
In the osmotic power generation field, reaching the industrial benchmark has been challenging because of the need for capillaries close to the sizes of ions and molecules. Here, we fabricated well-controlled 'along-the-capillary' membranes…
Potassium (K-) channels catalyze K+ ion permeation across cellular membranes while simultaneously discriminating their permeation over Na+ ions by more than a factor of a thousand. Structural studies show bare K+ ions occupying the…
Fluidic channels with physical dimensions approaching molecular sizes are crucial for novel desalination, chemical separation, and sensing technologies. However, fabrication of precisely controlled fluidic channels in the angstrom size is…
We employ molecular dynamics simulations to investigate ion and water transport driven by an electric field through quasi-two-dimensional nanoslits with a tapered geometry. Despite the absence of surface charge on the channel walls and the…
It has long been an aspirational goal to create artificial structures that allow fast permeation of water but reject even the smallest hydrated ions, replicating the feat achieved by nature in protein channels (e.g., aquaporins). Despite…
The field of nanofluidics has shown considerable progress over the past decade thanks to key instrumental advances, leading to the discovery of a number of exotic transport phenomena for fluids and ions under extreme confinement. Recently,…
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,…
A simple pillbox model with two adjustable parameters accounts for the selectivity of both DEEA Ca channels and DEKA Na channels in many ionic solutions of different composition and concentration. Only the side chains are different in the…
Fluidic channels at atomic scales regulate cellular trafficking and molecular filtration across membranes and thus play crucial roles in the functioning of living systems. However, constructing synthetic channels experimentally at these…
We present an equilibrium statistical-mechanical theory of selectivity in biological ion channels. In doing so, we introduce a grand canonical ensemble for ions in a channel's selectivity filter coupled to internal and external bath…