Comment on Breakdown of electroneutrality in nanopores

Levy et al. [1] reported the breakdown of electroneutrality in confined nanopores embedded in a dielectric medium. A Robin boundary condition was derived which eliminates the need to include the dielectric medium explicitly when solving for the electric field within the nanopore. In this comment, we point out issues related to the approximations made during the derivation of the boundary condition. The errors caused by the use of this boundary condition can be significant even for nanochannels of large aspect (length to radius) ratio, a condition on which the approximations in Levy et al. [1] are based.

Automated summary

Levy et al. introduced the concept of electroneutrality breakdown in confined nanopores. They derived a Robin boundary condition to simplify the calculation without explicitly considering the dielectric medium. However, we point out that the approximations made in Levy et al.'s study can lead to significant errors, especially for nanochannels with a large aspect ratio.