# Tuning the permeability of dense membranes by shaping nanoscale potentials

## TL;DR

This study uses Langevin simulations to show how the permeability of nanoscale membranes can be significantly controlled by designing the potential energy landscape, revealing complex behaviors influenced by membrane properties.

## Contribution

It introduces a method to tune membrane permeability by shaping nanoscale potentials, supported by scaling theories and simulation results.

## Key findings

- Permeability can be maximized or minimized through potential landscape design.
- Strong anti-correlation between partitioning and diffusivity causes extreme permeability values.
- Permeability behavior is highly sensitive to membrane attraction, topology, and density.

## Abstract

The permeability is one of the most fundamental transport properties in soft matter physics, material engineering, and nanofluidics. Here we report by means of Langevin simulations of ideal penetrants in a nanoscale membrane made of a fixed lattice of attractive interaction sites, how the permeability can be massively tuned, even minimized or maximized, by tailoring the potential energy landscape for the diffusing penetrants, depending on the membrane attraction, topology, and density. Supported by limiting scaling theories we demonstrate that the observed non-monotonic behavior and the occurrence of extreme values of the permeability is far from trivial and triggered by a strong anti-correlation and substantial (orders of magnitude) cancellation between penetrant partitioning and diffusivity, especially within dense and highly attractive membranes.