Rotary motors play key roles in energy transduction, from macroscale windmills to nanoscale turbines such as ATP synthase in cells. Despite our abilities to construct engines at many scales, developing functional synthetic turbines at the nanoscale has remained challenging. Here, we experimentally demonstrate rationally designed nanoscale DNA origami turbines with three chiral blades. These DNA nanoturbines are 24–27 nm in height and diameter and can utilize transmembrane electrochemical potentials across nanopores to drive DNA bundles into sustained unidirectional rotations of up to 10 revolutions s⁻¹. The rotation direction is set by the designed chirality of the turbine. All-atom molecular dynamics simulations show how hydrodynamic flows drive this turbine. At high salt concentrations, the rotation direction of turbines with the same chirality is reversed, which is explained by a change in the anisotropy of the electrophoretic mobility. Our artificial turbines operate autonomously in physiological conditions, converting energy from naturally abundant electrochemical potentials into mechanical work. The results open new possibilities for engineering active robotics at the nanoscale.

Flow-driven rotary motors such as windmills and water wheels drive functional processes in human society. Although examples of such rotary motors also feature prominently in cell biology, their synthetic construction at the nanoscale has remained challenging. Here we demonstrate flow-driven rotary motion of a self-organized DNA nanostructure that is docked onto a nanopore in a thin solid-state membrane. An elastic DNA bundle self-assembles into a chiral conformation upon phoretic docking onto the solid-state nanopore, and subsequently displays a sustained unidirectional rotary motion of up to 20 rev s⁻¹. The rotors harness energy from a nanoscale water and ion flow that is generated by a static chemical or electrochemical potential gradient in the nanopore, which are established through a salt gradient or applied voltage, respectively. These artificial nanoengines self-organize and operate autonomously in physiological conditions, suggesting ways to constructing energy-transducing motors at nanoscale interfaces.

Single-molecule sensing technologies aim to detect and characterize single biomolecules, but generally need labeling while the measurement times and throughput are severely restricted by a lack of positional control over the molecule. Here, a plasmonic nanopore biosensor is reported where single molecules can be electrophoretically delivered into a nanopore sensor with a plasmonic nanoantenna that is used to optically trap single molecules for extended measurement times. Using the light transmission through the antenna as read-out, optical trapping of 20 nm diameter polystyrene nanoparticles and individual beta-amylase proteins, a 200 kDa enzyme, in the plasmonic nanoantenna are demonstrated. Application of an electrical bias voltage allows the increase of the event rate over an order of magnitude as well as shorten the residence time of the proteins in the plasmonic nanopore as they can controllably be drawn out of the trap by electrical forces. Trapping is found to be assisted by protein–surface interactions and trapped proteins can denature on the nanopore surface. The integration of two single-molecule sensors, a plasmonic nanoantenna and solid-state nanopore, creates independent control handles at the single-molecule level—the optical trapping force and electrophoretic force—which provides augmented control over single molecules.

Plasmon resonance biosensors provide ultimate sensitivity at the single-molecule level. This sensitivity is, however, associated with a nanometer-sized confined hotspot, and molecular transport toward the sensor relies on inefficient diffusion. Here, we combine a plasmonic nanoantenna with a solid-state nanopore and demonstrate that single DNA molecules can be efficiently delivered to the plasmonic hotspots and detected in a label-free manner at submillisecond acquisition rates by monitoring the backscattered light intensity from the plasmonic nanoantennas. Our method realizes a better than 200 μs temporal resolution together with a down to subsecond waiting time, which is orders of magnitude better than traditional single-molecule plasmonic resonance sensing methods. Furthermore, the electric field applied to the nanopore can actively drive biomolecules away from the hotspot, preventing molecules to permanently bind to the gold sensor surface and allowing efficient reuse of the sensor. Our plasmonic nanopore sensor thus significantly outperforms conventional plasmon resonance sensors and provides great opportunities for high-throughput optical single-molecule-sensing assays.

Solid-state nanopores are single-molecule sensors that hold great potential for rapid protein and nucleic-acid analysis. Despite their many opportunities, the conventional ionic current detection scheme that is at the heart of the sensor suffers inherent limitations. This scheme intrinsically couples signal strength to the driving voltage, requires the use of high-concentration electrolytes, suffers from capacitive noise, and impairs high-density sensor integration. Here, we propose a fundamentally different detection scheme based on the enhanced light transmission through a plasmonic nanopore. We demonstrate that translocations of single DNA molecules can be optically detected, without the need of any labeling, in the transmitted light intensity through an inverted-bowtie plasmonic nanopore. Characterization and the cross-correlation of the optical signals with their electrical counterparts verify the plasmonic basis of the optical signal. We demonstrate DNA translocation event detection in a regime of driving voltages and buffer conditions where traditional ionic current sensing fails. This label-free optical detection scheme offers opportunities to probe native DNA-protein interactions at physiological conditions.

We report a simple and scalable technique for the fabrication of nanopore arrays on freestanding SiN and graphene membranes based on electron-beam lithography and reactive ion etching. By controlling the dose of the single-shot electron-beam exposure, circular nanopores of any size down to 16 nm in diameter can be fabricated in both materials at high accuracy and precision. We demonstrate the sensing capabilities of these nanopores by translocating dsDNA through pores fabricated using this method, and find signal-to-noise characteristics on par with transmission-electron-microscope-drilled nanopores. This versatile lithography-based approach allows for the high-throughput manufacturing of nanopores and can in principle be used on any substrate, in particular membranes made out of transferable two-dimensional materials.

Plasmonic nanopores combine the advantages of nanopore sensing and surface plasmon resonances by introducing confined electromagnetic fields to a solid-state nanopore. Ultrasmall nanogaps between metallic nanoantennas can generate the extremely enhanced localized electromagnetic fields necessary for single-molecule optical sensing and manipulation. Challenges in fabrication, however, hamper the integration of such nanogaps into nanopores. Here, a top-down approach for integrating a plasmonic antenna with an ultrasmall nanogap into a solid-state nanopore is reported. Employing a two-step e-beam lithography process, the reproducible fabrication of nanogaps down to a sub-1 nm scale is demonstrated. Subsequently, nanopores are drilled through the 20 nm SiN membrane at the center of the nanogap using focused-electron-beam sculpting with a transmission electron microscope, at the expense of a slight gap expansion for the smallest gaps. Using this approach, sub-3 nm nanogaps can be readily fabricated on solid-state nanopores. The functionality of these plasmonic nanopores for single-molecule detection is shown by performing DNA translocations. These integrated devices can generate intense electromagnetic fields at the entrance of the nanopore and can be expected to find applications in nanopore-based single-molecule trapping and optical sensing.

Long DNA molecules can self-entangle into knots. Experimental techniques for observing such DNA knots (primarily gel electrophoresis) are limited to bulk methods and circular molecules below 10 kilobase pairs in length. Here, we show that solid-state nanopores can be used to directly observe individual knots in both linear and circular single DNA molecules of arbitrary length. The DNA knots are observed as short spikes in the nanopore current traces of the traversing DNA molecules and their detection is dependent on a sufficiently high measurement resolution, which can be achieved using high-concentration LiCl buffers. We study the percentage of molecules with knots for DNA molecules of up to 166 kilobase pairs in length and find that the knotting occurrence rises with the length of the DNA molecule, consistent with a constant knotting probability per unit length. Our experimental data compare favourably with previous simulation-based predictions for long polymers. From the translocation time of the knot through the nanopore, we estimate that the majority of the DNA knots are tight, with remarkably small sizes below 100 nm. In the case of linear molecules, we also observe that knots are able to slide out on application of high driving forces (voltage).

Nanopores have become ubiquitous components of systems for single-molecule manipulation and detection, in particular DNA sequencing where electric field driven translocation of DNA through a nanopore is used to read out the DNA molecule. Here, we present a double-pore system where two nanopores are drilled in parallel through the same solid-state membrane, which offers new opportunities for DNA manipulation. Our experiments and molecular dynamics simulations show that simultaneous electrophoretic capture of a DNA molecule by the two nanopores mechanically traps the molecule, increasing its residence time within the nanopores by orders of magnitude. Remarkably, by using two unequal-sized nanopores, the pore of DNA entry and exit can be discerned from the ionic current blockades, and the translocation direction can be precisely controlled by small differences in the effective force applied to DNA. The mechanical arrest of DNA translocation using a double-pore system can be straightforwardly integrated into any solid-state nanopore platform, including those using optical or transverse-current readouts.