Light-Powered Directional Ion Transport via PFN-Br/MoS Heterogeneous Membranes: Band Alignment and Activation Energy Barrier Engineering.

Biological photoresponsive ion transport systems consistently attract researchers' attention owing to their remarkable functions of harvesting energy from nature and participating in visual perception systems. Designing and constructing artificial light-driven ion transport devices to mimic biological counterparts remains a challenge owing to fabrication limitations in nanoconfined spaces. Herein, a typical conjugated polyelectrolyte (PFN-Br) was assembled onto a laminated MoSM using simple solution-processing vacuum filtration, resulting in a heterogeneous three- and two-dimensional nanoporous membrane.

Bioinspired Light-Driven Proton Pump: Engineering Band Alignment of WS with PEDOT:PSS and PDINN.

Bioinspired two-dimensional (2D) nanofluidic systems for photo-induced ion transport have attracted great attention, as they open a new pathway to enabling light-to-ionic energy conversion. However, there is still a great challenge in achieving a satisfactory performance. It is noticed that organic solar cells (OSCs, light-harvesting device based on photovoltaic effect) commonly require hole/electron transport layer materials (TLMs), PEDOT:PSS (PE) and PDINN (PD), respectively, to promote the energy conversion.

Light-driven proton transmembrane transport enabled by bio-semiconductor 2D membrane: A general peptide-induced WS band shifting strategy.

Light-driven proton directional transport is important in living beings as it could subtly realize the light energy conversion for living uses. In the past years, 2D materials-based nanochannels have shown great potential in active ion transport due to controllable properties, including surface charge distribution, wettability, functionalization, electric structure, and external stimuli responsibility, etc. However, to fuse the inorganic materials into bio-membranes still faces several challenges.

Harnessing Ionic Power from Equilibrium Electrolyte Solution via Photoinduced Active Ion Transport through van-der-Waals-Like Heterostructures.

Nanofluidic ion transport through van der Waals heterostructures, composed of two or more types of reconstructed 2D nanomaterials, gives rise to fascinating opportunities for light-energy harvesting, due to coupling between the optoelectronic properties of the layered constituents and ion transport in between the atomic layers. Here, a photoinduced active ion transport phenomenon through transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs)-based van-der-Waals-like multilayer heterostructures is reported for harnessing ionic power from equilibrium electrolyte solution. The binary heterostructure comprises sequentially stacked 2D-WS and 2D-MoS multilayers with sub-1 nm interlayer spacing.

Light-Powered Directional Nanofluidic Ion Transport in Kirigami-Made Asymmetric Photonic-Ionic Devices.

Nacre-mimetic 2D nanofluidic materials with densely packed sub-nanometer-height lamellar channels find widespread applications in water-, energy-, and environment-related aspects by virtue of their scalable fabrication methods and exceptional transport properties. Recently, light-powered nanofluidic ion transport in synthetic materials gained considerable attention for its remote, noninvasive, and active control of the membrane transport property using the energy of light. Toward practical application, a critical challenge is to overcome the dependence on inhomogeneous or site-specific light illumination.

Light-Driven Active Proton Transport through Photoacid- and Photobase-Doped Janus Graphene Oxide Membranes.

Biological electrogenic systems use protein-based ionic pumps to move salt ions uphill across a cell membrane to accumulate an ion concentration gradient from the equilibrium physiological environment. Toward high-performance and robust artificial electric organs, attaining an antigradient ion transport mode by fully abiotic materials remains a great challenge. Herein, a light-driven proton pump transport phenomenon through a Janus graphene oxide membrane (JGOM) is reported.

Photo-switchable two-dimensional nanofluidic ionic diodes.

The bottom-up assembly of ion-channel-mimetic nanofluidic devices and materials with two-dimensional (2D) nano-building blocks paves a straightforward way towards the real-world applications of the novel transport phenomena on a nano- or sub-nanoscale. One immediate challenge is to provide the 2D nanofluidic systems with adaptive responsibilities and asymmetric ion transport characteristics. Herein, we introduce a facile and general strategy to provide a graphene-oxide-based 2D nanofluidic system with photo-switchable ionic current rectification (ICR).