Palladium Zero-Mode Waveguides for Optical Single Molecule Detection with Nanopores

Kavli Affiliate: Cees Dekker

| First 5 Authors: Nils Klughammer, Cees Dekker, , ,

| Summary:

Holes in metal films block any transmitting light if the wavelength is much
larger than the hole diameter, establishing such nanopores as so-called Zero
Mode Waveguides (ZMWs). Molecules on the other hand, can still passage through
these holes. We use this to detect individual fluorophore-labelled molecules as
they travel through a ZMW and thereby traverse from the dark region to the
illuminated side, upon which they emit fluorescent light. This is beneficial
both for background suppression and to prevent premature bleaching. We use
palladium as a novel metal-film material for ZMWs, which is advantageous
compared to conventionally used metals. We demonstrate that it is possible to
simultaneously detect translocations of individual free fluorophores of
different colors. Labeled DNA and protein biomolecules can be detected as well
at the single-molecule level with a high signal-to-noise ratio and at high
bandwidth, which opens the door to a variety of single-molecule biophysics
studies.

| Search Query: ArXiv Query: search_query=au:”Cees Dekker”&id_list=&start=0&max_results=10

Read More

Leave a Reply