“Single Conical Nanochannels Displaying pH-Tunable Rectifying Characteristics. Manipulating Ionic Transport with Zwitterionic Polymer Brushes”.

B. YAMEEN; M. ALI; R. NEUMANN; W. ENSINGER; W. KNOLL; O. AZZARONI

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

AMER CHEMICAL SOC

Año: 2009 vol. 131 p. 2070 - 2071

0002-7863

In this work we describe for the first time the integration of “smart” polymer brushes into single conical nanopores in order to obtain a new highly functional signal-responsive chemical nanodevice. The responsive brushes were constituted of zwitterionic monomers whose charge is regulated via pH changes in the environmental conditions. The pH-dependent chemical equilibrium of the monomer units provides a fine tuning of the ionic transport though the nanopore by simply presetting the pH of the electrolyte solution. Our results demonstrate that this strategy enables a higher degree of control over the rectification properties when compared to the nanochannels modified with charged monolayer assemblies. We envision that these results will create completely new avenues to build-up “smart” nanodevices using responsive polymer brushes integrated into single conical nanopores.