Ionic current through a nanopore three nanometers in diameter

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Yanyan Ge,¹ Dongyan Xu,² Juekuan Yang,^1,2 Yunfei Chen,¹ and Deyu Li²
¹Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Design and Manufacture of Micro-Nano Biomedical Instruments and China Education Council Key Laboratory of MEMS, School of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, People's Republic of China
²Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235, USA

Received 12 March 2009; revised 22 May 2009; published 18 August 2009

Ioniccurrent through a 3 nm in diameter nanopore has beeninvestigated using molecular dynamics. Results indicate that the ionic currentincreases linearly as the electrolyte concentration increases from 0.4 to0.9 M, beyond which the ionic current increases at aslower rate. In contradiction to the expectation that higher surfacecharge density will lead to more ions in the nanopore,and therefore, higher ionic current, the ionic current shows anincrease-decrease profile as the surface charge density increases. These unusualobservations are attributed to the fact that ions close tothe wall experience large viscous force, leading to low mobility.

URL:	http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevE.80.021918
DOI:	10.1103/PhysRevE.80.021918
PACS:	87.10.-e; 47.61.Fg 87.10.-e General theory and mathematical aspects (biological/medical physics) 47.61.Fg Flows in micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) and nano-electromechanical systems (NEMS) YEAR: 2009
KEYWORDS:	electrolytes, molecular dynamics method, nanoporous materials, surface charging