Stress-induced ripping enables fabrication of nanopores with dimensions smaller than the resolution limit of the employed lithography.

Authors

Xinxin Liu, Fabio De Ferrari, Kirill Khabarov, Maria Blanco Formoso, Saumey Jain, Anna Herland, Göran Stemme, Francesco De Angelis, Frank Niklaus

Published in

Science advances. Volume 12. Issue 34. Pages eaee8946. Aug 21, 2026. Epub Aug 21, 2026.

Abstract

Nanopores in ultrathin membranes are central to single-molecule sensing, filtration, and energy conversion applications, yet fabrication of solid-state nanopores remains limited by fundamental trade-off between resolution, throughput, and tool complexity. Here, we report a scalable nanopore fabrication process that exploits stress-induced mechanical ripping to detach a fragment from a membrane with lateral dimensions in the nm-scale, forming pores with diameters down to the sub-10 nm regime, which is well below the resolution limit of the employed lithography. Using this approach, we demonstrate wafer-scale fabrication of nanopores at densities exceeding 10⁵ pores per cm² in dielectric (HfO₂), semiconducting (SiGe), and metallic (Cr) membranes, including suspended HfO₂ membranes as thin as 2 nm. We demonstrate the utility of the fabricated nanopores for high-performance surface enhanced Raman readouts of single molecule translocations. Beyond nanopore fabrication, this fracture-based approach points to broader opportunities for nanometer- and atomic-scale structuring of ultrathin materials.

PMID:
42627917
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 22 Aug 2026.

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