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Effect Of Pressure On Ion Selectivity In Biomimetic Nanopores With Ph-Tunable Polyelectrolyte Brushes, Hui-Xia Shan, Zhen-Ping Zeng, Li-Xian Ye, Feng Shu

Journal of Electrochemistry

Biomimetic ionic channels of synthetic nanopores functionalized with pH-tunable polyelectrolyte (PE) brushes have significant application potentials for active transport control of ions, fluids, and bioparticles on the nanoscale. Ion selectivity is an important phenomenon of ion transport in nanofluidic devices, which has great theoretical significance and practical values. We propose a pressure control scheme to control the ion selectivity in biomimetic nano-systems with pH-tunable PE brushes. Effects of the solution properties (i.e., pH and background salt concentration), the applied voltage and pressure on ion selectivity are comprehensively investigated. The results show that ion selectivity is sensitive to pressure. Unlike the …