The AngstroCAP grant team members have made several original contributions, significantly extended the capabilities of nanofluidics beyond the state of the art, combining diverse materials and unconventional fabrication methods. Membrane-based applications such as osmotic power generation, desalination and molecular separation would benefit from decreasing water friction in nanoscale channels. However, mechanisms that allow fast water flows are not fully understood yet. The AngstroCAP team reported that angstrom-scale capillaries made from atomically flat crystals and study the effect of confining walls’ material on water friction (Nature Communications 2021). A massive difference is observed between channels made from isostructural graphite and hexagonal boron nitride, which is attributed to different electrostatic and chemical interactions at the solid-liquid interface. Our team in collaboration with Prof Bocquet's group (ENS Paris, France), we have reported neuromorphic memory using Å-channels, where electrolytes in 2D nanochannels develop long-term memory, from tens of minutes to hours (Science 2023).
In collaboration with Prof Radenovic's group (EPFL, Switzerland), we probed the 2D-confinement on organic liquids, where native defects on hBN act as nanoscale probes with super-resolution microscopy (Nature Materials 2023). We have extended further our collaboration with in-situ microscopy of electrical deformation induced ionic memory within 2D channels (in communication with journal, 2026).
Theoretically, four different types of memristors are possible, differentiated by their hysteresis loop direction (Nature communications 2025). We showed that by varying electrolyte composition, pH, applied voltage frequency, channel material and height, all four memristor types can emerge in nanofluidic systems. We observed two hitherto unidentified memristor types in 2D nanochannels and investigated their molecular origins. A minimal mathematical model incorporating ion–ion interactions, surface charge, and channel entrance depletion successfully reproduces the observed memristive behaviors. We further investigated the impact of temperature on ionic mobility and memristors characteristics. We showed that the channels display both volatile and non-volatile memory, including short-term depression akin to synapses, with signal recovery over time. These results suggest that nanofluidic devices may enable new neuromorphic architectures for pattern recognition and adaptive information processing.
