Light-Enhancing Plasmonic-Nanopore Biosensor for Superior Single-Molecule Detection

A stacked plasmonic nanowell-nanopore biosensor strongly suppresses the background fluorescence from the bulk and yields net more than tenfold enhancement of the fluorescence intensity. The device offers extremely high signal-to-background (S/B) ratio for single-molecule detection at ultralow excitation laser intensities, while maintaining extremely high temporal bandwidth for single-DNA sensing.