Fabrication of multiple nanopores in a SiN_x membrane via controlled breakdown

This paper reports a controlled breakdown (CBD) method to fabricate multiple nanopores in a silicon nitride (SiN_x) membrane with control over both nanopore count and nanopore diameter. Despite the stochastic process of the breakdown, we found that the nanopores created via CBD, tend to be of the same diameter. We propose a membrane resistance model to explain and control the multiple nanopores forming in the membrane. We prove that the membrane resistance can reflect the number of nanopores in the membrane and that the diameter of the nanopores is controlled by the exposure time and strength of the electric field. This controllable multiple nanopore formation via CBD avoids the utilization of complicated instruments and time-intensive manufacturing. We anticipate CBD has the potential to become a nanopore fabrication technique which, integrated into an optical setup, could be used as a high-throughput and multichannel characterization technique.