Correction to: Microsystems & Nanoengineering published online 16 May 2023 Correction Following publication of the original article1, it was noticed that the phrase ‘DNA sequencing’ is incorrect, which should be replaced by ‘biosensing’. The original paper has been updated.@en

Nanopores have attracted widespread attention in DNA sequencing and protein or biomarker detection, owning to the single-molecule-scale detection accuracy. Despite the most use of naturally biological nanopores before, solid-state nanopores are widely developed with strong robustness, controllable sizes and geometries, a wide range of materials available, as well as flexible manufacturing. Therefore, various techniques typically based on focused ion beam or electron beam have been explored to drill nanopores directly on free-standing nanofilms. To further reduce and sculpt the pore size and shape for nano or sub-nano space-time sensing precision, various controllable shrinking technologies have been employed. Correspondingly, high-energy-beam-induced contrac-tion with direct visual feedback represents the most widely used. The ability to change the pore diameter was attributed to surface tension induced original material migration into the nanopore center or new material deposition on the nanopore surface. This paper reviews typical solid-state nanopore shrinkage technologies, based on the careful summary of their principles and characteristics in particularly size and morphology changes. Furthermore, the advantages and disadvantages of different methods have also been compared completely. Finally, this review concludes with an optimistic outlook on the future of solid-state nanopores.@en

Temperature sensors are widely used in industrial production, national defense and military fields. The traditional temperature sensors normally operate in a limited temperature range no more than 200 °C, which cannot be used for extreme high temperature detections. In this paper, a thermal protection method for the sensing graphene membrane is proposed and a graphene high temperature sensor has been fabricated and investigated. By growing a single silicon nitride (Si3N4) protective layer on top of graphene, our design not only solves the problem that graphene is easily oxidized at high temperature, but also prevents graphene from being polluted by impurities, which would lead to the degradation of graphene performance. We further explore the protective effect of Si3N4 layer with different thicknesses on the performance of the sensor. It has been found that the 400 nm Si3N4 protective layer gives the best protective capability. The sensor exhibits a positive temperature coefficient (PTC) from 50 to 600 °C and a maximal temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) value of 0.29% °C−1 at 150 °C is achieved. It has been demonstrated that our graphene high temperature sensor with protective layer structure maintains good stability not only at high temperature up to 600 °C, but also over a long-period of time under room temperature. In short, the high temperature sensor possesses a wide temperature measurement range with micro dimensions, a relatively high TCR and a smaller thermal hysteresis. The thermal protection approach proposed in this paper provides a new idea for the fabrication of high temperature pressure sensor, which is expected to be applied in aerospace engines and oil wells, etc.@en

Solid-state nanopores attract widespread interest, owning to outstanding robustness, extensive material availability, as well as capability for flexible manufacturing. Bioinspired solid-state nanopores further emerge as potential nanofluidic diodes for mimicking the rectification progress of unidirectional ionic transport in biological K+ channels. However, challenges that remain in rectification are over-reliance on complicated surface modifications and limited control accuracy in size and morphology. In this study, suspended Si3N4 films of only 100 nm thickness are used as substrate and funnel-shaped nanopores are controllably etched on that with single-nanometer precision, by focused ion beam (FIB) equipped with a flexibly programmable ion dose at any position. A small diameter 7 nm nanopore can be accurately and efficiently fabricated in only 20 ms and verified by a self-designed mathematical model. Without additional modification, funnel-shaped Si3N4 nanopores functioned as bipolar nanofluidic diodes achieve high rectification by simply filling each side with acidic and basic solution, respectively. Main factors are finely tuned experimentally and simulatively to enhance the controllability. Moreover, nanopore arrays are efficiently prepared to further improve rectification performance, which has great potential for high-throughput practical applications such as extended release of drugs, nanofluidic logic systems, and sensing for environmental monitoring and clinical diagnosis.@en

Ionic FETs have enormous potential for energy conversion, sensing, and ionic circuits due to their efficient regulation of the nanochannel. Here ionic FETs based on single-crystal silicon nanopores and the rectification of the fabricated devices are studied. The electrical characterization results demonstrated that since the silicon-based nanopores have the advantage of modulating the surface charge due to their semiconductor nature and benefitting from the effective 3D gating effect on the nanochannel, the magnitude and polarity of surface charge can be modulated by the gate voltage. The rectification effect can be adjusted by applying a certain voltage and fulfilling a transition between anion selectivity and cation selectivity when the surface charge polarity is reversed. Moreover, current–voltage characteristics of the reported ionic FET can be switched between ohmic and diode-like regimes. The proposed ionic FETs supply a novel platform to study the ionic properties and have great potential to be applied in large-scale ionic circuits due to their excellent performance. Finally, simulation results prove the surface charge modulated by the gate voltage determines the magnitude and direction of rectification, which is consistent with the reported experiment result.@en

Ionic FETs have enormous potential for energy conversion, sensing, and ionic circuits due to their efficient regulation of the nanochannel. Here ionic FETs based on single-crystal silicon nanopores and the rectification of the fabricated devices are studied. The electrical characterization results demonstrated that since the silicon-based nanopores have the advantage of modulating the surface charge due to their semiconductor nature and benefitting from the effective 3D gating effect on the nanochannel, the magnitude and polarity of surface charge can be modulated by the gate voltage. The rectification effect can be adjusted by applying a certain voltage and fulfilling a transition between anion selectivity and cation selectivity when the surface charge polarity is reversed. Moreover, current–voltage characteristics of the reported ionic FET can be switched between ohmic and diode-like regimes. The proposed ionic FETs supply a novel platform to study the ionic properties and have great potential to be applied in large-scale ionic circuits due to their excellent performance. Finally, simulation results prove the surface charge modulated by the gate voltage determines the magnitude and direction of rectification, which is consistent with the reported experiment result.@en

The application of single-crystal silicon (SCS) nanopore structures in single-molecule-based analytical devices is an emerging approach for the separation and analysis of nanoparticles. The key challenge is to fabricate individual SCS nanopores with precise sizes in a controllable and reproducible way. This paper introduces a fast-stop ionic current-monitored three-step wet etching (TSWE) method for the controllable fabrication of SCS nanopores. Since the nanopore size has a quantitative relationship with the corresponding ionic current, it can be regulated by controlling the ionic current. Thanks to the precise current-monitored and self-stop system, an array of nanoslits with a feature size of only 3 nm was obtained, which is the smallest size ever reported using the TSWE method. Furthermore, by selecting different current jump ratios, individual nanopores of specific sizes were controllably prepared, and the smallest deviation from the theoretical value was 1.4 nm. DNA translocation measurement results revealed that the prepared SCS nanopores possessed the excellent potential to be applied in DNA sequencing. [Figure not available: see fulltext.]@en

In this paper, we report a modified three step anisotropic wet etching (TSWE) method to fabricate solid-state silicon nanoslits. The slit-opening process is performed by <111> crystal plane etching. The etching rate of the <111> crystal plane is reasonably slow as it is only 1/45 of the <100> etching rate, thus allowing and therefore good slits-opening controllability. By slowly etching the <111> crystal plane, the over-etching was effectively reduced. Perfectly rectangular nanoslits with different dimensions were successfully obtained. The smallest achieved feature size of the nanoslit is 8.3 nm.@en