Nanopore Fabrication
We prepare conical and cylindrically shaped nanopores. These serve as synthetic analogs of biological channels as well as nanofludic structures of various use. Our nanopores are created using the track etching technique. Our samples are irradiated at Gesellschaft fuer Scherionenforschung, Darmstadt, Germany (www.gsi.de). Here is an image of some etched pores.
The track etching technique consists of two steps
1) Irradiation with heavy ions-- formation of latent tracks
2) Chemical Etching
Although the latent tracks are cylindrical, we can tailor the size and shape of the pore during chemical etching. Our pores can be crafted to be as small as a few nanometers up to as large as several micrometers.
We also experiment with different densities of pores. Current projects range from 1 pore/cm2 up to 109 pores/cm2
Please check our newest pores (below) prepared by the track-etching technique in Silicon Nitride.
