Slowing DNA translocation through a solid-state nanopore by applying hydrophobic microchannel-guided walls

Abstract

Here, the authors present a novel solid-state nanopore device, fabricated by a transfer of a nanopore device to a dielectric polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microchannel-guided structure, and investigate the characteristics of DNA translocation through the nanopore. Apart from the extremely low noise level exhibited by this device on a highly insulating and low dielectric PDMS microchannel, this device also shows a slow translocation speed of 48 kbp Lambda DNA (λ-DNA), with a reduction of more than one order of magnitude than that in previously reported results on SiNx nanopores. The authors propose that the electrostatic interaction between the PDMS microchannel and DNA, resulting from the hydrophobicity of both PDMS and DNA, provides an additional attraction force that slows down DNA translocation. Such advanced solid-state nanopore devices can be utilized in various fields, including DNA or protein sequencing, drug screening, and microRNA detection.