Gold nanorod translocation through a solid-state nanopore

Abstract

Recently, nanopores have been used in an essential technique for detecting single molecule with high sensitivity. The initial application of nanopores to DNA and RNA sequencing has been expanded to sensing proteins and nanoparticles, including Bovine serum albumin, silica nanoparticles, polystyrene beads, and others. In our study, for the first time, a positively charged gold nanorod was investigated using a solid-state nanopore device. Various gold nanorods passed through the nanopore with different current blockages and duration times, providing a measurement of the nanorod diameter, length, and charge. Our findings indicate that nanopore sensing might be a new method for characterizing the size, shape, and charge of nanoparticles.