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Updated: Jul 26, 2025

Membrane Transport Processes Analyzed by a Highly Parallel Nanopore Chip System at Single Protein Resolution
Published on: August 16, 2016
Ion transport in two-dimensional flexible nanoporous membranes
Yechan Noh1, Narayana R Aluru2
1Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
Abstract:
Ion transport is a fundamental mechanism in living systems that plays a role in cell proliferation, energy conversion, and maintaining homeostasis. This has inspired various nanofluidic applications such as electricity harvesting, molecular sensors, and molecular separation. Two dimensional (2D) nanoporous membranes are particularly promising for these applications due to their ultralow transport barriers. We investigated ion conduction across flexible 2D membranes via extensive molecular dynamics simulations. We found that the microscopic fluctuations of these membranes can significantly increase ion conductance, for example, by 320% in Cu-HAB with 0.5 M KCl. Our analysis of ion dynamics near the flexible membranes revealed that ion hydration is destabilized when the membrane fluctuated within a specific frequency range leading to improved ion conduction. Our results show that the dynamic coupling between the fluctuating membrane and ions can play a crucial role in ion conduction across 2D nanoporous membranes.
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