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Updated: Nov 6, 2025

Fine-tuning the Size and Minimizing the Noise of Solid-state Nanopores
Published on: October 31, 2013
From Water Solutions to Ionic Liquids with Solid State Nanopores as a Perspective to Study Transport and
Sanjin Marion1, Nataša Vučemilović-Alagić2,3, Mario Špadina2
1Laboratory of Nanoscale Biology, Institute of Bioengineering, School of Engineering, EPFL, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Abstract:
Solid state nanopores are single-molecular devices governed by nanoscale physics with a broad potential for technological applications. However, the control of translocation speed in these systems is still limited. Ionic liquids are molten salts which are commonly used as alternate solvents enabling the regulation of the chemical and physical interactions on solid-liquid interfaces. While their combination can be challenging to the understanding of nanoscopic processes, there has been limited attempts on bringing these two together. While summarizing the state of the art and open questions in these fields, several major advances are presented with a perspective on the next steps in the investigations of ionic-liquid filled nanopores, both from a theoretical and experimental standpoint. By analogy to aqueous solutions, it is argued that ionic liquids and nanopores can be combined to provide new nanofluidic functionalities, as well as to help resolve some of the pertinent problems in understanding transport phenomena in confined ionic liquids and providing better control of the speed of translocating analytes.
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