Ionic Memcapacitive Effects in Nanopores

Abstract

Using molecular dynamics simulations, we show that, when subject to a periodic external electric field, a nanopore in ionic solution acts as a capacitor with memory (memcapacitor) at various frequencies and strengths of the electric field. Most importantly, the hysteresis loop of this memcapacitor shows both negative and diverging capacitance as a function of the voltage. The origin of this effect stems from the slow polarizability of the ionic solution due to the finite mobility of ions in water. We develop a microscopic quantitative model which captures the main features we observe in the simulations and suggest experimental tests of our predictions. We also suggest a possible memory mechanism due to the transport of ions through the nanopore itself, which may be observed at small frequencies. These effects may be important in both DNA sequencing proposals using nanopores and possibly in the dynamics of action potentials in neurons.

5 pages, 5 figures, revised version

References in corpus (6)

• Circuit elements with memory: memristors, memcapacitors and meminductors
• Physical approaches to DNA sequencing and detection
• Influence of the environment and probes on rapid DNA sequencing via transverse electronic transport
• Quantized ionic conductance in nanopores
• Solid-state memcapacitive system with negative and diverging capacitance
• Effect of Noise on DNA Sequencing via Transverse Electronic Transport

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• Dehydration and ionic conductance quantization in nanopores
• Memcomputing with membrane memcapacitive systems
• Teaching Memory Circuit Elements via Experiment-Based Learning
• Fourier Response of a Memristor: Generation of High Harmonics with Increasing Weights
• Probing water structures in nanopores using tunneling currents
• Photogalvanic effect in hydrodynamic flows of nonreciprocal electron liquids
• Oscillating electroosmotic flow in channels and capillaries with modulated wall charge distribution