Ionic blockade in a charged single-file water channel

Abstract

The classical continuum theories fail to describe the ionic transport in Angstrom channels, where conduction deviates from Ohm's law, as attributed to dehydration/self-energy barrier and dissociation of Bjerrum ion-pairs in previous work. Here we found that the cations are strongly bound to the surface charge that blockade the ionic transport in a single-file water channel, causing nonlinear current-voltage responses. The presence of free ions significantly increased the probability of bound ions being released, resulting in an ionic current. We found that ionic conduction gradually becomes Ohmic as surface charge density increases, but the conduction amplitude decreased due to increased friction from bound ions. We rationalized the ionic transport by 1D Kramers' escape theory framework, which well described nonlinear ionic current, and the impact of surface charge density on turning to Ohmic system. Our results possibly provide an alternative view of ionic blockade in Angstrom channels