Ionic current blockade in a nanopore due to an ellipsoidal particle

Abstract

Nanopores in solid-state membranes have been used to detect, identify, filter, and characterize nanoparticles and biological molecules. In this work, we simulate an ionic flow through a nanopore while an ellipsoidal nanoparticle translocates through a pore. We numerically solve the Poisson-Nernst-Planck equations to obtain the ionic current values for different aspect ratios, sizes, and orientations of a translocating particle. By extending the existing theoretical model for the ionic current in the nanopore to the particles of ellipsoidal shape, we propose semiempirical fitting formulas which describe our computed data within 5% accuracy. We also demonstrate how the derived formulas can be used to identify the dimensions of nanoparticles from the available experimental data which may have useful applications in bionanotechnology.