Next BBDG Seminar: "Nanofluidics: From ion transport in nanotube channels to ionic computing"

🗣️ Aleksandr Noy (Materials Science Division, Physics and Life Sciences Directorate, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA)

🗓️ Oct, Tue 27, 2026, 12:00

📍Félix M. Goñi Atrium (Instituto Biofisika 🗺️)

📄 "Nanofluidics: From ion transport in nanotube channels to ionic computing"

Nanofluidic transport regime, where molecular confinement strongly impacts ion and molecules dynamics, is important for many applications at the water-energy nexus and beyond. Living systems have mastered nanofluidic transport: protein channels move ions and small molecules across biological membranes with exquisite selectivity and efficiency. In this talk, I will describe how carbon nanotube porins (CNTPs)-ultra-short carbon nanotubes assembled in a lipid membrane matrix-can exploit extreme spatial confinement to transport water, protons, and ions with efficiencies that rival or exceed their biological counterparts. I will discuss the roles of confinement and slip flow in enhancing transport kinetics and show how the local electronic environment of the channel walls can enhance transport selectivity. Finally, I will talk about using nanofluidic transport in droplet interface junctions to demonstrate synaptomimetic behaviors and proof-of-principle ionic computing functionality. Overall, these results show how nanofluidic phenomena could enable the next generation of precision separations technologies and energy-efficient information processing.

Short Bio:

Alex Noy is a Senior Research Scientist at the Materials Science Division at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). He joined LLL in 1998 as its first E.O. Lawrence Fellow after getting his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Harvard University and became an Indefinite Career Staff Scientist in 2001. His research group works at the intersection of materials science and engineering and nanoscience. The current research portfolio in the Noy group centers on nanofluidics and transport in highly confined environments of nanotube pores, precision separations in nanomaterials platforms, and neuromorphic ionic computing. Since 2005 Noy has also been an Adjunct Professor at the University of California Merced. He is a Fellow of the Materials Research Society.