Multimedia Gallery
Particle Simulation Results
Particle Simulation Results
This image shows particle simulation results for the trajectories of potassium (green) and chlorine (grey) ions, permeating successfully the ompF porin ion channel found in the membrane of e. coli bacteria.
Since this ion channel is very resilient and readily available, it is studied as a candidate for the realization of artificial, bio-inspired membranes for sensing devices. The simulator BioMOCA used to obtain these results was developed with National Science Foundation support through the Network for Computational Nanotechnology program.
The simulation was created by Umberto Ravaioli, a professor at the University of Illinois in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the leader of the Multiscale Computational Nanosystems group at the Beckman Institute. Ravaioli's main research interests are in the area of transport simulation in nanostructures. His group has developed self-consistent 2-D and 3-D Monte Carlo simulators for nanoscale silicon devices, which have been applied to the study of ultra-scaled, conventional and double-gate MOSFETs and FinFETs. These simulation tools are being used by research groups at major semiconductor companies.
The same simulation methodologies have been applied recently to study transport of ions across ion channels in biological and bio-inspired membranes. (Date of Image: September 2006)
Credit: Gulzar Kathawala, Trudy van der Straaten and Umberto Ravaioli, University of Illinois
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