  Fluid and ionic transport at nanoscale recently highlighted a wealth of
exotic behaviours. However, the artificial nanofluidic devices are still far
from the advanced functionalities existing in biological systems, such as
electrically and mechanically activated transport. Here we focus on the ionic
transport through 2 nm-radius individual multiwalled carbon nanotubes (CNT),
under the combination of mechanical and electrical forcings. Our findings
evidence mechanically activated ionic transport under the form of an ionic
conductance which depends quadratically on the applied pressure. Our
theoretical study relates this behaviour with the complex interplay between
electrical and mechanical drivings, and shows that the superlubricity of CNT is
a prerequisite to attain mechanically activated transport. The pressure
sensitivity shares similarities with the response of biological
mechanosensitive ion channels observed here for the first time in an artificial
system. This paves the way to build new active nanofluidic functionalities
inspired by the complex biological machinery.
