A Simple and Cost-Effective Nanopore Fabrication Platform with Microcontroller Technology

With growing interest in solid-state nanopore sensing—a single molecule technique capable of profiling a host of analyte classes—establishing facile and scalable approaches for fabricating molecular size pores is gaining considerable traction. The introduction of nanopore fabrication by controlled breakdown (CBD) has transformed the economics and accessibility of nanopore fabrication. Here, we present an Arduinobased, portable CBD device, with an estimated cost of less than 120 USD (≳10x cheaper than most laboratory implementations), to fabricate pores of less than 5 nm in diameter. Using this device, 40 pores with sizes between ~2.5 nm and ~12.6 nm diameter were fabricated. The device is constructed with offthe-shelf readily available components, powered through the same cable used for data transmission, and controlled using a highly customizable MATLAB application, which has capabilities encompassing pore fabrication, pore enlargement, and current-voltage acquisition for pore size estimation. This creates a holistically portable sensing platform when coupled with portable amplifiers: a critical step towards onfield solid-state nanopore sensing applications.