Investigation on the interaction length and access resistance of a nanopore with an atomic force microscopy

Abstract

Nanopore devices have attracted a lot of attention for their potential application in DNA sequencing. Here, we study how an occluding object placed near a nanopore affects its access resistance by integrating an atomic force microscopy with a nanopore sensor. It is found that there exists a critical hemisphere around the nanopore, inside which the tip of an atomic force microscopy will affect the ionic current. The radius of this hemisphere, which is a bit smaller than the theoretical capture radius of ions, increases linearly with the applied bias voltage and quadratically with the nanopore diameter, but is independent of the operation modes and scanning speeds of the atomic force microscopy. A theoretical model is also proposed to describe how the tip position and geometrical parameters affect the access resistance.