Ionic Transport through Uncharged Nanopores

International audience; In the area of nanopore technology, detection methods are based on the recorded electrical signal induced by ionic transport through the nanopore.This signal also is often used to determine the nanopore diameter. Thus fundamental understanding of ionic transport at the nanoscale is essential, because ions do not in general exhibit bulk-like behavior. Indeed, at low salt concentration, the conductance-concentration relation does not follow a bulk-like linear law. In addition, for small nanopores, surface effects can prevail over bulk transport. In order to illustrate this phenomenon, we have tailored high aspect ratio (conical and cylindrical), putatively uncharged nanopores using tracketching on PET Film and atomic layer deposition technique. Starting from experimental results, we will discuss different approaches to fitting the data, including a simple phenomenological model, commonly used to determine nanopore diameter, and a more sophisticated mesoscopic model based on the space charge model. Application of the mesoscopic model leads us to conclude that, surprisingly, a weak surface charge density is needed to fit the transport model to the experimental data. To go further, molecular dynamic simulations were also performed on a system modeled to resemble as closely as possible the experimental one. From different nanopore geometries and the adsorption of hydrophibic polypeptides, we will attempt to explain the origin of the weak surfacecharge.