DA McCurry, RC Bailey – The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 2016
Nanopores are promising structures for small volume separations, but often require complex top-down fabrication and are not easily (re)configurable to allow for dynamically tuned separations. Herein we report the first use of nanoporous gold (NPG) membranes as tunable, charge-based separation elements. NPG is fabricated into a robust network of interconnecting pores via simple solution de-alloying. We demonstrate that control over the selective permeation of small molecule analytes can be controlled via three different methods: 1) anion adsorption at the Au surface; 2) pH-tuning of self-assembled monolayer (SAM) charge; and 3) electrochemical oxidation of a redox-active SAM. This simple and versatile membrane system is promising as a dynamically-tunable element for small volume separations.
… the conductivity measurement setup was used for molecular transport, except that one
reservoir (the sink) was fiber-optically coupled to a StellarNet SL3-LL deuterium lamp with
collimating lens and StellarNet Black Comet UV-Visible spectrometer. …
