Ionic Coulomb Blockade in Nanopores

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that ion-ion interactions in nanopores can cause ionic Coulomb blockade, a phenomenon where accumulated ions impede further flow, analogous to electronic Coulomb blockade, with potential experimental detection.

Contribution

The study provides analytical and simulation evidence of ionic Coulomb blockade in nanopores, highlighting its physical mechanism and potential for experimental observation.

Findings

Ionic Coulomb blockade occurs under specific conditions in nanopores.

Ion build-up impedes flow due to Coulomb repulsion.

Analogies with electronic Coulomb blockade are discussed.

Abstract

Understanding the dynamics of ions in nanopores is essential for applications ranging from single-molecule detection to DNA sequencing. We show both analytically and by means of molecular dynamics simulations that under specific conditions ion-ion interactions in nanopores lead to the phenomenon of ionic Coulomb blockade, namely the build-up of ions inside a nanopore with specific capacitance impeding the flow of additional ions due to Coulomb repulsion. This is the counterpart of electronic Coulomb blockade observed in mesoscopic systems. We discuss the analogies and differences with the electronic case as well as experimental situations in which this phenomenon could be detected.