Fluxes of non-interacting and strongly repelling particles through a single conical channel: Analytical results and their numerical tests

Abstract

Using a diffusion model of particle dynamics in the channel, we study entropic effects in channel-facilitated transport. We derive general expressions for the fluxes of non-interacting particles and particles that strongly repel each other through the channel of varying cross section area, assuming that the transport is driven by the difference in particle concentrations on the two sides of the membrane. For a special case of a right truncated cone expanding in the left-to-right direction, we show how the fluxes depend on the geometric parameters of the channel and on the particle concentrations. For non-interacting particles the flux is direction-independent in the sense that inversion of the concentration difference leads to the inversion of the direction of the flux without changing its magnitude. This symmetry is broken for repelling particles: the flux in the left-to-right direction exceeds its right-to-left counterpart. Our theoretical predictions are supported by three-dimensional Brownian dynamics simulations.