Electrical biosensing with synthetic nanopores and nanochannels

Abstract

The integration of constriction structures such as nanopores and nanochannels into fluidic devices discloses powerful biosensing capabilities that can be tuned to a wide range of analytes through conceptually simple size calibrations. The practical implementation of this tuning requires a nontrivial manipulation of matter at nanoscale with further requirements for low complexity and low-cost procedures that may be adapted to industrial production. Here, we review the recent progress on the fabrication techniques of nanopores and nanochannels, together with the efforts to realize their full biosensing potential by understanding and amending the problems still afflicting the measurement performed during operation. • Confining fluidic nanostructures provide single-molecule sensitivity to biosensors. • Crucial tuning of nanostructure size stimulates the research on fabrication. • D materials boost the performance of nanopore technology. • Polymeric nanochannels pave the way for high-throughput applications in biosensing.