Effects of Non-Uniform Occupancy on Selective Transport Through Nanochannels

By using an exclusion model, in this work we address how the non-uniform occupancy of a nanochannel, for a limited set of conditions, is related to the transport of specific molecules through it. The results show that the shape of a channel greatly influences its transporting behavior and therefore, it can be used as a tunable parameter to achieve a desired set of transporting conditions. In particular, we have found that for applications which require a highly selective channel that is able to handle large input fluxes of specific particles in both directions, a double-funnel architecture is the best suited. As the obtained results mainly arise from the competition of particles for limited space, we expect them to be applicable to a great variety of transporting phenomena where the channel has a limited number of interacting sites with the transported particles.