Ultrathin, High-Lifetime Silicon Nitride Membranes for Nanopore Sensing.

Thin membranes are highly sought-after for nanopore-based single-molecule sensing, and fabrication of such membranes becomes challenging in the ≲10 nm thickness regime where a plethora of useful molecule information can be acquired by nanopore sensing. In this work, we present a scalable and controllable method to fabricate silicon nitride (SiN) membranes with effective thickness down to ∼1.5 nm using standard silicon processing and chemical etching using hydrofluoric acid (HF).