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J Colloid Interface Sci 2021 Mar 24;596:54-63. Epub 2021 Mar 24.

Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada. Electronic address:

Hypothesis: Nanofluidic diodes have attracted intense attention recently. Commonly used materials to design these devices are membrane-based short nanopores and aligned Carbon nanotube bundles. It is highly desirable and very challenging to develop a nanofluidic diode based on a single PDMS nanochannel which is easier to be introduced into an integrated electronic system on a chip. Read More

J Colloid Interface Sci 2021 Mar 15;594:737-744. Epub 2021 Mar 15.

Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taiwan; Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei 10607, Taiwan. Electronic address:

The performance of a dielectric membrane in desalting is assessed by considering a cylindrical nanopore, surface modified by a dielectric layer, subject to simultaneously applied pressure gradient and gating potential. The charged conditions of the nanopore can be tuned by modulating the applied gating potential so that it can be used for rejecting different types of salt. In general, the thinner the dielectric layer and/or the larger its dielectric constant the better the salt rejection performance. Read More

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2021 Apr;118(14)

Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801;

One of the most fundamental questions in the field of Cys-loop receptors (pentameric ligand-gated ion channels, pLGICs) is how the affinity for neurotransmitters and the conductive/nonconductive state of the transmembrane pore are correlated despite the ∼60-Å distance between the corresponding domains. Proposed mechanisms differ, but they all converge into the idea that interactions between wild-type side chains across the extracellular-transmembrane-domain (ECD-TMD) interface are crucial for this phenomenon. Indeed, the successful design of fully functional chimeras that combine intact ECD and TMD modules from different wild-type pLGICs has commonly been ascribed to the residual conservation of sequence that exists at the level of the interfacial loops even between evolutionarily distant parent channels. Read More

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces 2021 Mar 18;13(12):14507-14517. Epub 2021 Mar 18.

Key Laboratory of Bio-Inspired Smart Interfacial Science and Technology of Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Environment, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, People's Republic of China.

The self-assembly of block copolymers in a confined space has been proven to be a facile and robust strategy for fabricating assembled structures with various potential applications. Herein, we employed a new pH-responsive polymer self-assembly method to regulate ion transport inside artificial nanochannels. The track-etched asymmetric nanochannels were functionalized with PS--P4VP/hPS blend polymers, and the ionic conductance and rectification properties of the proposed system were investigated. Read More

Adv Colloid Interface Sci 2021 Apr 23;290:102385. Epub 2021 Feb 23.

Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Houston, 4726 Calhoun Rd, Houston, TX 77204, USA. Electronic address:

Evaporation is a physical phenomenon with fundamental significance to both nature and technology ranging from plant transpiration to DNA engineering. Various analytical and empirical relationships have been proposed to characterize evaporation kinetics at macroscopic scales. However, theoretical models to describe the kinetics of evaporation from nano and sub-nanometer (molecular) confinements are absent. Read More