Synthetic nanoporous materials have numerous potential biological and medical applications that involve sorting, sensing, isolating and releasing biological molecules. Nanoporous systems engineered to mimic natural filtration systems are actively being developed for use in smart implantable drug delivery systems, bioartificial organs, and other novel nano-enabled medical devices. Recent advances in nanoscience have made it possible to precisely control the morphology as well as physical and chemical properties of the pores in nanoporous materials that make them increasingly attractive for regulating and sensing transport at the molecular level. In this work, an overview of nanoporous membranes for biomedical applications is given. Various in vivo and in vitro membrane applications, including biosensing, biosorting, immunoisolation and drug delivery, are presented. Different types of nanoporous materials and their fabrication techniques are discussed with an emphasis on membranes with ordered pores. Desirable properties of membranes used in implantable devices, including biocompatibility and antibiofouling behavior, are discussed. The use of surface modification techniques to improve the function of nanoporous membranes is reviewed. Despite the extensive research carried out in fabrication, characterization, and modeling of nanoporous materials, there are still several challenges that must be overcome in order to create synthetic nanoporous systems that behave similarly to their biological counterparts.

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Presented are results of molecular dynamics simulations that demonstrate flow gating through a polymer-grafted nanopore as a function of effective solvent quality. Analysis of density and flow profiles from the simulations show that the difference in drag force exerted on the flowing solvent due to different polymer brush configurations produces the effective fluid gating. Shear-induced permeability changes through these nanopores has also been investigated. These results establish a critical starting point in nanofluidics from which continuum modeling can be developed to design this emerging class of smart nanoporous materials with tailor-made properties.

In this study, we explore the wear behavior of amplitude modulation atomic force microscopy (AM-AFM, an intermittent-contact AFM mode) tips coated with a common type of diamond-like carbon, amorphous hydrogenated carbon (a-C:H), when scanned against an ultra-nanocrystalline diamond (UNCD) sample both experimentally and through molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Finite element analysis is utilized in a unique way to create a representative geometry of the tip to be simulated in MD. To conduct consistent and quantitative experiments, we apply a protocol that involves determining the tip-sample interaction geometry, calculating the tip-sample force and normal contact stress over the course of the wear test, and precisely quantifying the wear volume using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy imaging. The results reveal gradual wear of a-C:H with no sign of fracture or plastic deformation. The wear rate of a-C:H is consistent with a reaction-rate-based wear theory, which predicts an exponential dependence of the rate of atom removal on the average normal contact stress. From this, kinetic parameters governing the wear process are estimated. MD simulations of an a-C:H tip, whose radius is comparable to the tip radii used in experiments, making contact with a UNCD sample multiple times exhibit an atomic-level removal process. The atomistic wear events observed in the simulations are correlated with under-coordinated atomic species at the contacting surfaces.

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