Nanopore Fabrication Made Easy: A Portable, Affordable Microcontroller-Assisted Approach for Tailored Pore Formation via Controlled Breakdown

Abstract

With growing interest in solid-state nanopore sensing─a single-molecule technique capable of profiling a host of analyte classes─establishing facile and scalable approaches for fabricating molecular-size pores is becoming increasingly important. The introduction of nanopore fabrication by controlled breakdown (CBD) has transformed the economics and accessibility of nanopore fabrication. Here, we introduce the design of an Arduino-based, portable USB-powered CBD device, with an estimated cost of <150 USD, which is ≈10–100× cheaper than most commercial solutions, capable of fabricating single nanopores conducive for single molecule sensing experiments. We demonstrate the facile fabrication of 60 tailored nanopores (∼2.6–12.6 nm) with ∼80% of the pores within 1 nm of the target diameter. Selected pores were then tested with double-stranded DNA, the canonical molecular ruler, demonstrating their performance for single-molecule sensing applications. The device is constructed with off-the-shelf readily available components and controlled using a highly customizable MATLAB application, which has capabilities encompassing pore fabrication, pore enlargement, and current–voltage acquisition for pore size estimation. When combined with a portable amplifier, this device also provides a fully portable sensing platform, an important step toward portable solid-state nanopore sensing applications.