Sub-20 nm Nanopores Sculptured by a Single Nanosecond Laser Pulse

Single-molecule based 3rd generation DNA sequencing technologies have been explored with tremendous effort, among which nanopore sequencing is considered as one of the most promising to achieve the goal of $1,000 genome project towards personalized medicine. Solid state nanopore is consented to be complementary to protein nanopore and subjected to extensive investigations in the past decade. However, the prevailing solid-state nanopore preparation still relies on focused ion or electron beams, which are expensive and time consuming. Here we demonstrate the fabrication of nanopores down to 19 nm with a single nanosecond laser pulse. The laser drilling process is understood based upon a 2D axisymmetric transient heat transfer model, which predicts the laser fluence-dependent pore size distribution and shape with excellent agreement to electron microscopy and tomography analysis. As-drilled nanopore devices (26 nm) exhibit adequate sensitivity to detect single DNA molecule translocations and discriminate unfolded or folded events. Sub-10 nm nanopores can be readily achieved upon a thin layer of alumina deposition by atomic layer deposition, which further improves the DNA translocation signal to noise ratio considerably. Our work provides a solution for fast, low-cost and efficient large-scale fabrication of solid state nanopore devices for the 3rd generation nanopore sequencing.