Nanofluidic Memory Devices in Solid State Conical Nanopores

The synthetic solid-state nanochannels show a broad range of gating and rectification properties that can be further used to implement nanofluidic logic devices similar to the conventional electric logic circuits.¹

Employed the single ion-track-etched nanochannels, which are excellent platforms for studying the ionic transport behavior in nanoscale, we experimentally characterized the nanoscale ionic transport with several different solutions, and found, for the first time, that the ionic conductivity could exhibit an intriguing hysteresis behavior. The hysteresis behavior could be further employed to realize nanofluidic memristors, which are a new type of nanofluidic logic devices² and have been considered as the fourth fundamental elements in conventional electrical circuitry. As nanofluidic memristors, the devices show excellent repeatability, high ON/OFF ratio, and long retention time. Then we further studied the mechanism of the system and required properties of the nanopore. Realizing the memristor concept in nanofluidic regime will not only enrich the family of nanofluidic logic devices, but also greatly enable the nanofluidic circuitry to achieve more complex functionalities.