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  • Title: Na⁺ and K⁺ ion selectivity by size-controlled biomimetic graphene nanopores.
    Author: Kang Y, Zhang Z, Shi H, Zhang J, Liang L, Wang Q, Ågren H, Tu Y.
    Journal: Nanoscale; 2014 Sep 21; 6(18):10666-72. PubMed ID: 25089590.
    Abstract:
    Because biological ionic channels play a key role in cellular transport phenomena, they have attracted extensive research interest for the design of biomimetic nanopores with high permeability and selectivity in a variety of technical applications. Inspired by the structure of K(+) channel proteins, we designed a series of oxygen doped graphene nanopores of different sizes by molecular dynamics simulations to discriminate between K(+) and Na(+) channel transport. The results from free energy calculations indicate that the ion selectivity of such biomimetic graphene nanopores can be simply controlled by the size of the nanopore; compared to K(+), the smaller radius of Na(+) leads to a significantly higher free energy barrier in the nanopore of a certain size. Our results suggest that graphene nanopores with a distance of about 3.9 Å between two neighboring oxygen atoms could constitute a promising candidate to obtain excellent ion selectivity for Na(+) and K(+) ions.
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