Controlled Breakdown

The controlled breakdown (CBD) nanopore fabrication method possesses the following distinguishing attributes over other state-of-the-art beam-based fabrication techniques, like TEM drilling:

• Ultra-low cost: Price of equipment and its operation is negligible compared to beam-based methods.
• Precise pore sizing: Diameter of pore from 0.5-nm to 100-nm achieved with sub-nm precision.
• Fast and Efficient: Pore forms directly in salt solution in seconds to minutes, and is ready for biosensing, eliminating many lengthly manipulating steps.
• Versatility: Applicable to various materials (e.g. SiN, graphene), multilayered membranes (incl. metal-coated dielectrics) and diverse device architectures (e.g. microfluidics).
• Amenable to integration: pores can be fabricated in-situ, within embedded structures with no need for direct line-of-sight access.

Our Nature Protocols presents our accumulated knowledge of nanopore fabrication by CBD since the initial publication of the method, and freely provide to the research community a software, plans for building the hardware and our latest protocols required to reliably automate fabrication of low noise, precisely sized, solid-state nanopores.

You can download all the hardware and software files for free here: CBD Files (note assembly is required). 

If you are interested in a turn-key solution contact Northern Nanopore Instruments.