In biology, mechanosensitive ion channels facilitate the conversion of mechanical stimuli, such as sound and touch, into electrical signals. Similar functionality in artificial systems was recently predicted in the form of stretch-activated transport through porous 2D membranes. Here we describe an opposite behavior, in which ion transport is inactivated upon stretching a subnanoporous 2D membrane. We explore electrophoretic ion transport through several subnanoporous membranes using molecular dynamics simulations. We demonstrate that aqueous ${\mathrm{K}}^{+}$ transport decreases by a factor of 3–8 under stretching of order 3%. In contrast, ${\mathrm{Na}}^{+}$ ions exhibit transport activation by stretching, suggesting ion-dependent activation and inactivation in a single membrane. Our analysis shows that inactivation of ${\mathrm{K}}^{+}$ transport is caused by a strain-induced repulsive-to-attractive transition in the ${\mathrm{K}}^{+}$-pore interactions due to alignment of the local energy minima.

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• Chemical Physics & Physical Chemistry
• Complex systems
• Ionic transport
• Membranes
• Solvation
• 2-dimensional systems
• Molecular dynamics