Dynamics of polymer translocation through kinked nanopores

Polymer translocation through nanopore has potential technological applications for DNA sequencing, where one challenge problem is to slow down translocation speed. Inspired by experimental findings that kinked nanopores exhibit a large reduction in translocation velocity compared with their straight counterparts, we investigate the dynamics of polymer translocation through kinked nanopores in two dimensions under an applied external field. With increasing the tortuosity of an array of nanopores, our analytical results show that the translocation probability decreases. Langevin dynamics simulation results support this prediction and further indicate that with increasing the tortuosity, translocation time shows a slow increase followed by a rapid increase after a critical tortuosity. This behavior demonstrates that kinked nanopores can effectively reduce translocation speed. These results are interpreted by the roles of the tortuosity for decreasing the effective nanopore diameter, increasing effective nanopore length, and greatly increasing the DNA-pore friction. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.