A complex interplay between transport and dispersion across wiggling nanopores
(PHYSorg.com Nanotechnology)

Physicist Richard Feynman highlighted the importance of fluctuations in living matter when he stated, `Everything that living things do can be understood in terms of the jigglings and wigglings of atoms.` This holds true for the widely investigated transport driven by fluctuations in biological nanopores and for similar observations in non-living fluid phases, where bulk hydrodynamic fluctuations dramatically affect nanoscale dynamics. Numerical simulations have also highlighted the impact of phonon modes in carbon nanotubes transporting confined particles within them, and studies at larger scales have investigated microfluidic surface acoustic waves that manipulate fluids at the microscale. While these observations show the quantitative impact of surface agitation on transport properties spanning considerable length scales, a general theory that predicts the dependence of transport properties on surface fluctuations is lacking. Such potential to actively or passively control molecular transport through nanopores will impact biosensing applications.