Ionic current through a nanopore three nanometers in diameter

Yanyan Ge, Dongyan Xu, Juekuan Yang, Yunfei Chen, and Deyu Li

Phys. Rev. E 80, 021918 – Published 18 August 2009

Abstract

Ionic current through a 3 nm in diameter nanopore has been investigated using molecular dynamics. Results indicate that the ionic current increases linearly as the electrolyte concentration increases from 0.4 to 0.9 M, beyond which the ionic current increases at a slower rate. In contradiction to the expectation that higher surface charge density will lead to more ions in the nanopore, and therefore, higher ionic current, the ionic current shows an increase-decrease profile as the surface charge density increases. These unusual observations are attributed to the fact that ions close to the wall experience large viscous force, leading to low mobility.

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Received 12 March 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.80.021918

Authors & Affiliations

Yanyan Ge¹, Dongyan Xu², Juekuan Yang^1,2, Yunfei Chen^1,*,†, and Deyu Li^2,*,‡

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

^*Corresponding authors.
^†yunfeichen@seu.edu.cn
^‡deyu.li@vanderbilt.edu

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Issue

Vol. 80, Iss. 2 — August 2009

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Physical Review E

covering statistical, nonlinear, biological, and soft matter physics