Wigner crystal in snaked nanochannels

We study the properties of a Wigner crystal in snaked nanochannels and show that they are characterized by a conducting sliding phase at low charge densities and an insulating pinned phase above a critical charge density. The transition between these phases has a devil’s staircase structure typical for the Aubry transition in dynamical maps and the Frenkel-Kontorova model. We discuss the implications of this phenomenon for charge density waves in quasi-one-dimensional organic conductors and for supercapacitors in nanopore materials.