Seminar
Tuesday, September 3, 2019 - 10:45am
Professor Ellison of Ursinus College will present
"Understanding and Controlling Molecular and Ionic Flow Through Carbon Nanotubes"
on September 3, 2019 at 10:45am in Neville Hall, Room 3
Nanopores offer excellent potential for applications such as separation, sensing, and filtration. However, much basic research must be done in order to realize practical applications. We have separately studied the motion of methanol, a neutral molecule, and four different amino acid cations, through a carbon nanotube nanopore. Methanol’s motion was largely insensitive to the applied voltage, as expected for a neutral molecule. Methanol’s motion is successfully modeled by an analytical solution to the Poisson-Boltzmann equation for a cylindrical nanopore. On the other hand, the amino acid molecules tested exhibited flow with two components: direct transport and flow interrupted by significant interactions with the internal wall of the nanotube. This latter component of the flow agrees well with a model that incorporates adsorption and desorption with the nanotube wall. The conductance changes and electrophoretic mobilities of the different amino acids display some differences, but using those properties alone might not be sufficient to identify a particular amino acid in a sensing application.