AMaSiS 2018 Workshop: Abstracts

On Poisson-Nernst-Planck models for solid state nanopores

Martin Burger${}^{\mathbf{\text{(1)}}}$, Bart Matejczyk${}^{\mathbf{\text{(2)}}}$, Giles Richardson${}^{\mathbf{\text{(3)}}}$,

Jan-Frederik Pietschmann${}^{\mathbf{\text{(1)}}}$ and Marie-Therese Wolfram${}^{\mathbf{\text{(2,4,5)}}}$

(1) University of Münster

(2) University of Warwick

(3) University of Southampton

(4) Radon Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics, Linz

(5) TU Munich

In this talk we discuss the transport of ions in large solid state nanopores. We are particularly interested in polyethylene terepthalate (PET) nanopores, which are produced by irradiating a 12 micrometer thick PET foil with heavy ions and subsequent chemical etching. The chemical etching creates carboxyl groups at the pore walls, which in addition to the multi-scale nature of the pore influence the ionic flow. The Poisson-Nernst-Planck (PNP) equations have been used successfully to describe the flow of charged particles in semiconductor devices, batteries and more recently nanopores. We discuss the underlying assumption and to what extent PNP can be used in these type of pores. Especially finite size effects as well as the multi-scale nature of the pores pose challenges for the Modelling and simulation. We discuss different approaches, such as nonlinear PNP systems and reduced PNP models, to overcome these issues.