Experiments of poly(dT)20 electrophoresis throughα-hemolysin nanopores were performed to unveil the electrophoretic transport mechanism of DNA through nanopores in high concentration potassium chloride solution. It is found that there are two obvious current blockades induced by poly(dT)20 translocation and collision events. Both blockade currents increase linearly with the applied bias voltage. However, the normalized blockade currents are almost kept the same although variable bias voltages are applied. The collision time of poly(dT)20 in the luminal site of the pore remains constant for different voltages. The translocation speed of poly(dT)20through the nanopore decreases with the increase of bias voltage. It is because as the potential increases, the drag force on the homopolymer helps it to crumple into a cluster much easier due to the poor stacking of thymine residues compared with homopolymers consisting of other nucleotides. Molecular dynamics simulations further confirm the experimental results. Increasing the applied bias voltage can slowdown the translocation velocity of the flexible poly(dT)20, which favors increasing the precision of single molecule detection by using nanopores.
The model of ion transportation through graphene nanochannels is established by the molecular dynamics simulation method. Statistics of the electric potential and charge distribution are made, respectively, on both sides of graphene nanopore with various diameters. Then, their changing relationship with respect to the nanopore diameter is determined. When applying a uniform electric field, polar water molecules are rearranged so that the corresponding relationship between the polarized degree of these molecules and the nanopore diameter can be created. Based on the theoretical model of ion transportation through nanochannels,the changing relationship between the concentration of anions/cations in nanochannels and bulk solution concentration is quantitatively analyzed. The results show that the increase of potential drop and charge accumulation, as well as a more obvious water polarization, will occur with the decrease of nanopore diameter. In addition, hydrogen ion concentration has a large proportion in nanochannels with a sodium chloride(NaCl) solution at a relative low concentration. As the NaCl concentration increases, the concentration appreciation of sodium ions tends to be far greater than the concentration drop of chloride ions. Therefore, sodium ion concentration makes more contribution to ionic conductance.