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Updated: Jul 15, 2025

Membrane Transport Processes Analyzed by a Highly Parallel Nanopore Chip System at Single Protein Resolution
Published on: August 16, 2016
Turning catalytically active pores into active pumps
G C Antunes1, P Malgaretti1, J Harting1,2
1Helmholtz-Institut Erlangen-Nürnberg für Erneuerbare Energien (IEK-11), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Cauer Str. 1, 91058 Erlangen, Germany.
Abstract:
We develop a semi-analytical model of self-diffusioosmotic transport in active pores, which includes advective transport and the inverse chemical reaction that consumes solute. In previous work [Antunes et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 188003 (2022)], we have demonstrated the existence of a spontaneous symmetry breaking in fore-aft symmetric pores that enables them to function as a micropump. We now show that this pumping transition is controlled by three timescales. Two timescales characterize advective and diffusive transport. The third timescale corresponds to how long a solute molecule resides in the pore before being consumed. Introducing asymmetry to the pore (either via the shape or the catalytic coating) reveals a second type of advection-enabled transition. In asymmetric pores, the flow rate exhibits discontinuous jumps and hysteresis loops upon tuning the parameters that control the asymmetry. This work demonstrates the interconnected roles of shape and catalytic patterning in the dynamics of active pores and shows how to design a pump for optimum performance.
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