Atomic-Scale Fluidic Diodes Based on Triangular Nanopores in Bilayer Hexagonal Boron Nitride

Abstract

Nanofluidic diodes based on nanochannels have been studied theoretically and experimentally for applications such as biosensors and logic gates. However, when analyzing attoliter-scale samples or enabling high-density integration of lab-on-a-chip devices, it is beneficial to miniaturize the size of a nanofluidic channel. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we investigate conductance of nanopores in bilayer hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN). Remarkably, we found that triangular nanopores possess excellent rectifications of ionic currents while hexagonal ones do not. It is worth highlighting that the pore length is only about 0.7 nm, which is about the atomic limit for a bipolar diode. We determined scaling relations between ionic currents I and pore sizes L for small nanopores, that are I ∼ L 1 in a forward biasing voltage and I ∼ L 2 in a reverse biasing voltage. Simulation results qualitatively agree with analytical ones derived from the one-dimensional Poisson-Nerst-Planck equations.