Nanopores: Fabrication of Metallized Nanopores in Silicon Nitride Membranes for Single‐Molecule Sensing (Small 13/2010)

The cover image shows an artistic rendering of a metallic nanopore structure for single-molecule sensing. A conical orifice with a small diameter of several nanometers is processed into a thin silicon nitride membrane (violet) by electron-beam lithography. After evaporation of a gold film, a truncated metallic cone is created which is barely wide enough to let individual DNA molecules (red) pass from one side of the membrane to the other; the translocation of single molecules can be monitored by recording transient pulses in the ionic current across the pore. The metal coating readily permits the pore walls to be chemically functionalized with self-assembled monolayers and brings about intriguing interactions with translocating molecules: DNA is found to pass through the metalized pores particularly slowly. For more information, please read the Full Paper “Fabrication of Metallized Nanopores in Silicon Nitride Membranes for Single-Molecule Sensing” by U. Rant et al., beginning on page 1406.