Speaker
Description
Over the past years, our group has explored the use of bioinspired solid-state nanochannels and nanofluidic architectures as versatile platforms for controlling ionic transport at the nanoscale. Inspired by the remarkable transport and gating mechanisms found in biological ion channels, our research has focused on understanding how confinement, surface chemistry, molecular recognition, and material architecture can be combined to impart functionality to artificial nanofluidic systems.
In this talk, an overview of several research directions developed within the group over the last few years will be presented, illustrating the evolution from fundamental studies of ion transport and molecular interactions under nanoconfinement toward increasingly complex and functional nanofluidic architectures. Particular attention will be given to chemically responsive nanochannels, where specific molecular interactions can be translated into changes in ionic transport and rectification, providing biomimetic approaches for chemical and biological sensing.
The talk will then highlight different strategies developed to dynamically control ionic transport, including electrochemically responsive interfaces and nanoprecipitation-based processes capable of modifying the internal transport environment of nanochannels. These approaches demonstrate how transient or reversible changes within nanoconfined spaces can give rise to nonlinear, hysteretic, and memory-like transport responses. In parallel, the incorporation of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) into solid-state nanochannels has enabled the development of hierarchical heterostructures, in which the combination of nanochannel and nanoporous MOF length scales provides new opportunities to regulate ion transport and access distinct transport regimes.