Pressure-Induced Enlargement and Ionic Current Rectification in Symmetric Nanopores

Abstract

Nanopores in solid state membranes are a tool able to probe nanofluidic phenomena, or can act as a single molecular sensor. They also have diverse applications in filtration, desalination, or osmotic power generation. Many of these applications involve chemical, or hydrostatic pressure differences which act on both the supporting membrane, and the ion transport through the pore. By using pressure differences between the sides of the membrane, and an alternating current approach to probe ion transport, we investigate two distinct physical phenomena: the elastic deformation of the membrane through the measurement of strain at the nanopore, and the growth of ionic current rectification with pressure due to pore entrance effects.

From Water Solutions to Ionic Liquids with Solid State Nanopores as a Perspective to Study Transport and Translocation Phenomena

“…The high ILs viscosities would imply less of an influence of electroosmotic flow and allow for necessarily excluding complex nonlinear ion transport functionalities arising due to a competition of advective and diffusive ion transport. [52,199] As IL ions have lower diffusion constants and higher viscosity than water solutions, the Péclet number is still reasonable such that interesting nanofluidic phenomena may take place in a temperature-dependent fashion.…”

Stress induced delamination of suspended MoS2 in aqueous environments

“…23,24 Even though the strain-induced wrinkling and delamination was thoroughly studied, [25][26][27] it is not fully explored how applying hydrostatic pressure can influence the membrane performance and 2D film adhesion to the substrate in an aqueous environment. It was shown, that surface-related phenomena such as material damage, delamination or nanobubbles 28 can exhibit nonlinear current signals, 20,21,23 analogous to those reported as ionic coulomb blockade. 29 Thus, even though MoS 2 was proven stable at working pressure of up to 3.5 bar, 20,30 further investigation of the application of both electrical fields and pressure is crucial to uncover adhesion-related artifacts, help understand the 2D-nanofluidic system and bring insights into designing an artifact-free 2D-material platforms.…”

“…It was shown, that surface-related phenomena such as material damage, delamination or nanobubbles 28 can exhibit nonlinear current signals, 20,21,23 analogous to those reported as ionic coulomb blockade. 29 Thus, even though MoS 2 was proven stable at working pressure of up to 3.5 bar, 20,30 further investigation of the application of both electrical fields and pressure is crucial to uncover adhesion-related artifacts, help understand the 2D-nanofluidic system and bring insights into designing an artifact-free 2D-material platforms.…”

“…16 In most nanofluidic experiments, the application of electrical fields is used as a basic tool to probe the ion transport properties of the system. 17,18 Lately however, the use of hydrostatic pressure as an additional probe has been found to be critically important to study the nonlinear coupling of ion transport with fluid flow 19,20 as well as a tool to probe proper wetting behaviour. 21 It has been established, that applying high voltage can be potentially damaging to the 2D material as it can cause membrane breakdown 11,22 and delamination through electrolyte intercalation.…”

Dipole alignment of water molecules flowing through a carbon nanotube

“…Recent years have seen an upsurge of interest in exploring ultrafast transport of water in various nanochannels with potential applications such as desalination, separation process, and energy conversion [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. However, a quantitative understanding of flow-induced effects in nanochannels is still lacking [12,13].…”