Paper detail

Breakdown of electroneutrality in nanopores

Ion transport in extremely narrow nanochannels has gained increasing interest in recent years due to its unique physical properties, and the technological advances that allow us to study them. It is tempting to approach this regime with the tools and knowledge developed for wider microfluidic devices and use continuum models like the Poisson-Nernst-Planck equation. However, it turns out that some of the most basic principles we take for granted in a large system, such as electroneutrality, can breakdown under extreme confinement. We show that in a truly one-dimensional system, interacting with three-dimensional electrostatic interactions, the screening length is exponentially large in ionic spacing, and can easily exceed the macroscopic length of a nanotube. Without screening, electroneutrality is broken, and ionic transport can behave in a completely different way. In this work, we build a theoretical framework for electroneutrality breakdown in a one-dimensional nanopore and show how it provides an elegant interpretation for the peculiar scaling observed in experimental measurements of ionic conductance in carbon nanotubes.