Electrostatic Gating of Ionic Conductance through Heterogeneous van der Waals Nanopores

is dependent on the polarity of the transmembrane potential and leads to ion current rectification. Molecular dynamics simulations of a nanopore in a hBN-graphene-hBN stack reveal confinement and surface charge-dependent suppression of the relative permittivity of interfacial water. Continuum modeling with radially varying interfacial water permittivity reproduces the asymmetric I-V characteristics and explains how the embedded gate sculpts local potential and ion concentrations. By enabling sub-0.5 V control of ionic transport at up to 100 mM salt concentrations, these devices address a key need in nanofluidics to create low-power ionic circuits and biosensing.