Solid-state nanopores

Principle of nanopore sequencing. Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

Solid-state nanopores is part of the Nanopore Wiki learning path. Solid-state nanopores are fabricated in inorganic, polymer, glass, or two-dimensional materials and are important for device-oriented nanopore sensing.

Core concepts

• Materials include silicon nitride, silicon dioxide, glass, graphene, and other thin membranes.
• Fabrication controls pore size, thickness, surface chemistry, and device integration.
• Strengths include mechanical stability and chip compatibility.
• Challenges include surface noise, wetting, clogging, and pore-to-pore variability.

Device workflow

Step	Description
1	Choose membrane material and pore fabrication method.
2	Wet and condition the pore before recording.
3	Measure open-pore conductance and compare with expected geometry.
4	Use controls to separate target events from surface and clogging artifacts.

Typical applications

• Particle and polymer sensing.
• Protein and nucleic-acid translocation studies.
• Integrated microfluidic and chip-based devices.

Common pitfalls

• Equating nominal pore diameter with effective sensing diameter.
• Ignoring surface charge, adsorption, and wetting history.
• Comparing solid-state and biological pores without considering thickness and noise.

Related pages

• Nanopore technology
• Fundamentals
• Experimental workflows
• Data analysis

References

• Solid-state nanopore
• Graphene