Ultra-sensitive flow measurement in individual nanopores through pressure--driven particle translocation.

A challenge for the development of nanofluidics is to develop new instrumentation tools, able to probe the extremely small mass transport across individual nanochannels. Such tools are a prerequisite for the fundamental exploration of the breakdown of continuum transport in nanometric confinement. In this letter, we propose a novel method for the measurement of the hydrodynamic permeability of nanometric pores, by diverting the classical technique of Coulter counting to characterize a pressure-driven flow across an individual nanopore.