A Scattering Nanopore for Single Nanoentity Sensing

Optical nanopore methods are widely believed to be practical approaches to address the flicker noise and the throughput limitations of nanopore detection. However, most optical nanopore methods in the literature are based on fluorescent labeling, which perplexes the detection operation and limits their applications. In this paper, we demonstrate a brand new optical nanopore technique named “scattering nanopore method”. This method achieves single nanopore readouts without the introduction of dyes by detecting scattering light through a single subwavelength aperture on Au film. The single particle induced optical fluctuations could be detected simultaneously with the nanopore ionic current readouts. The method we demonstrated here opens a new direction for nanopore sensing of single particles, even single molecules in the near future.