# Driving an electrolyte through a corrugated nanopore

## TL;DR

This paper analyzes how electrolyte transport in a corrugated nanopore is affected by geometry and wall conductivity, deriving the Onsager matrix and highlighting the sensitivity of transport coefficients to channel features.

## Contribution

It provides a theoretical derivation of the Onsager matrix for electrolytes in varying-section channels, emphasizing the impact of geometry and wall properties on transport coefficients.

## Key findings

- Off-diagonal Onsager elements increase with channel corrugation.
- Transport coefficients are highly sensitive when Debye length is comparable to channel width.
- Most transport coefficients decrease or remain unaffected by increased corrugation.

## Abstract

We characterize the dynamics of a $z-z$ electrolyte embedded in a varying-section channel. In the linear response regime, by means of suitable approximations, we derive the Onsager matrix associated to externally enforced gradients in electrostatic potential, chemical potential, and pressure, for both dielectric and conducting channel walls. We show here that the linear transport coefficients are particularly sensitive to the geometry and the conductive properties of the channel walls when the Debye length is comparable to the channel width. In this regime, we found that one pair of off-diagonal Onsager matrix elements increases with the corrugation of the channel transport, in contrast to all other elements which are either unaffected by or decrease with increasing corrugation. Our results have a possible impact on the design of blue-energy devices as well as on the understanding of biological ion channels through membranes