Designing a thermo-switchable channel for nanofluidic controllable transportation.

Abstract

Owing to the important roles of chemical gates in biological systems, the biomimetic design of artificial switchable nanodevices has been attracting tremendous interest. Here, we design a cylindrical thermo-sensitive channel, in which nanofliudic transport properties can be controlled by manipulating environmental temperature. The switchable channel is formed by a polystyrene-b-poly(acrylic acid)-b-polystyrene (PS-PAA-PS)-like triblock copolymer brush whose conformation and phase behavior are dependent on temperature. With the increase of temperature, the designed channel exhibits "close→open→close" behavior, which can serve as a kind of excellent switchable nanodevice for nanofluidic controllable transportation.