Sensing with nanopores – the influence of asymmetric blocking on electrochemical redox cycling current

Abstract

Nanoporous redox cycling devices are highly efficient tools for the electrochemical sensing of redox-active molecules. By using a redox-active mediator, this concept can be exploited for the detection of molecular binding events via blocking of the redox cycling current within the nanopores. Here, we investigate the influence of different blocking scenarios inside a nanopore on the resulting redox cycling current. Our analysis is based on random walk simulations and finite element calculations. We distinguish between symmetric and asymmetric pore blocking and show that the current decrease is more pronounced in the case of asymmetric blocking reflecting the diffusion-driven pathway of the redox-active molecules. Using random walk simulations, we further study the impact of pore blocking in the frequency domain and identify relevant features of the power spectral density, which are of particular interest for sensing applications based on fluctuation analysis.