1.D.326.  The Azo-PMA Nucleic Acid & Protein NanoPore (Azo-PMA NP-NP) Family

Owing to the facile fabrication and surface modification, the cost-effective polymer nanopores are widely employed in unimolecular determination of biomacromolecules and selective sensing of small molecules, nanoparticles and biomarkers (Qi et al. 2025). However, the documented polymer nanochannels are generally microscale in length with low spatial resolution. Qi et al. 2025 synthesized azobenzene side-chain polymer (Azo-PMA) and spin-coated on silicon nitride membranes to obtain a polymer film of nanoscale thickness for further nanopore generation via a controlled dielectric breakdown (CDB) approach. The Azo-PMA nanopores demonstrated good ion transporting activities, pH tolerance and stability in high concentrations of electrolytes with low ionic current noise. The azobenzene-containing polymer nanopores exhibit photo-response upon UV/Vis. light irradiation. The Azo-PMA nanopore devices are utilized for linear and quadruple nucleic acids discrimination, sensing of proteins with distinct shapes and sizes, as well as the single amino acid resolution with good capture rate and sensitivity. We established an unimolecular sensing platform using polymer nanopores for nucleic acid and protein detection with good spatial resolution, which will be an addition for the nanopore-carrier material exploration and applications in potential genomics and proteomics with high spatiotemporal resolution and low cost (Qi et al. 2025).

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