TY - GEN
T1 - Sapphire-Supported Nanopores for Low-Noise DNA Sensing
AU - Xia, Pengkun
AU - Zuo, Jiawei
AU - Choi, Shinhyuk
AU - Chen, Xiahui
AU - Bai, Jing
AU - Wang, Chao
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 IEEE.
PY - 2021/1/25
Y1 - 2021/1/25
N2 - Solid-state nanopore sensors have broad applications from single-molecule biosensing to diagnostics and sequencing. Prevalent nanopore sensors are fabricated on silicon (Si) substrates through micromachining, however, the high capacitive noise resulting from Si conductivity has seriously limited both their sensing accuracy and recording speed. A new approach is proposed here for forming nanopore membranes on insulating sapphire wafers by anisotropic wet etching of sapphire through micro-patterned triangular masks. Reproducible formation of small membranes with an average dimension of 10 μm are demonstrated. For validation, a sapphire-supported (SaS) nanopore chip, with a 100 times larger membrane area than silicon-supported (SiS) nanopore, showed 130 times smaller capacitance (10 pF) and 2.5 times smaller rootmean-square (RMS) noise current (20 pA over 100 kHz bandwidth). Tested with 1k bp double-stranded DNA, the SaS nanopore enabled sensing at microsecond speed with a signal-to-noise ratio of 21, compared to 11 from a SiS nanopore. This SaS nanopore presents a manufacturable platform feasible for biosensing as well as a wide variety of MEMS applications.
AB - Solid-state nanopore sensors have broad applications from single-molecule biosensing to diagnostics and sequencing. Prevalent nanopore sensors are fabricated on silicon (Si) substrates through micromachining, however, the high capacitive noise resulting from Si conductivity has seriously limited both their sensing accuracy and recording speed. A new approach is proposed here for forming nanopore membranes on insulating sapphire wafers by anisotropic wet etching of sapphire through micro-patterned triangular masks. Reproducible formation of small membranes with an average dimension of 10 μm are demonstrated. For validation, a sapphire-supported (SaS) nanopore chip, with a 100 times larger membrane area than silicon-supported (SiS) nanopore, showed 130 times smaller capacitance (10 pF) and 2.5 times smaller rootmean-square (RMS) noise current (20 pA over 100 kHz bandwidth). Tested with 1k bp double-stranded DNA, the SaS nanopore enabled sensing at microsecond speed with a signal-to-noise ratio of 21, compared to 11 from a SiS nanopore. This SaS nanopore presents a manufacturable platform feasible for biosensing as well as a wide variety of MEMS applications.
KW - MEMS
KW - insulating sapphire substrates
KW - low capacitance
KW - low noise
KW - signal-to-noise ratio
KW - solid-state nanopores
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85103467911&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85103467911&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/MEMS51782.2021.9375372
DO - 10.1109/MEMS51782.2021.9375372
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85103467911
T3 - Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS)
SP - 354
EP - 357
BT - 34th IEEE International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, MEMS 2021
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 34th IEEE International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, MEMS 2021
Y2 - 25 January 2021 through 29 January 2021
ER -