Interaction-driven giant electrostatic modulation of ion permeation in atomically small capillaries

Dhal Biswabhusan, Yechan Noh, Sanat Nalini Paltasingh, Chandrakar Naman, Siva Sankar Nemala, Rathi Aparna, Kaushik Suvigya, Andrea Capasso, Saroj Kumar Nayak, Li-Hsien Yeh and Kalon Gopinadhan ()
Additional contact information
Dhal Biswabhusan: Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar
Yechan Noh: University of Colorado Boulder
Sanat Nalini Paltasingh: Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar
Chandrakar Naman: Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar
Siva Sankar Nemala: International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory
Rathi Aparna: Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar
Kaushik Suvigya: Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar
Andrea Capasso: International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory
Saroj Kumar Nayak: Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar
Li-Hsien Yeh: National Taiwan University of Science and Technology
Kalon Gopinadhan: Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Manipulating the electrostatic double layer and tuning the conductance in nanofluidic systems at salt concentrations of 100 mM or higher has been a persistent challenge. The primary reasons are (i) the short electrostatic proximity length, $${{{\boldsymbol{ \sim }}}}$$ ~ 3–10 Å, and (ii) difficulties in fabricating atomically small capillaries. Here, we successfully fabricate in-plane vermiculite laminates with transport heights of $${{{\boldsymbol{ \sim }}}}$$ ~ 3–5 Å, which exhibit a cation selectivity close to 1 even at a 1000 mM concentration, suggesting an overlapping electrostatic double layer. For gate voltages from −2 V to +1 V, the K+-intercalated vermiculite shows a remarkable conductivity modulation exceeding 1400% at a 1000 mM KCl concentration. The gated ON/OFF ratio is mostly unaffected by the ion concentration (10–1000 mM), which confirms that the electrostatic double layer overlaps with the collective ion movement within the channel with reduced activation energy. In contrast, vermiculite laminates intercalated with Ca2+ and Al3+ ions display reduced conductance with increasing negative gate voltage, highlighting the importance of ion-specific gating effects under Å-scale confinement. Our findings contribute to a deeper understanding of electrostatic phenomena occurring in highly confined fluidic channels, opening the way to the exploration of the vast library of two-dimensional materials.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-62737-3 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-62737-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-62737-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().