Peter Jones receives Science2Start award

Award for Dr. Peter Jones: together with his colleagues Teresa Tang and Michael Mierzejewski, he has been awarded second place in the Science2Start award of the BioRegio STERN for his development “PoreForge”. This honors his success in research on solid-state nanopores.

The head of the Biomedical Micro- and Nanotechnology working group at the NMI would like to use these solid-state nanopores for single-molecule sensor technologies, for example for proteins. However, current methods have their limitations: they require central laboratories and expensive equipment, which limits access and scalability.

Dr. Peter Jones and his team are developing technologies for single-molecule sensing using solid-state nanopores. These nanometer-scale pores are produced in semiconductor materials and are considered promising sensors for the label-free analysis of individual proteins. Their advantage: they enable very compact systems through electrical readout and offer potential for high scalability thanks to semiconductor-based production.

However, solid-state nanopore sensors are currently not available on the market in sufficient quantities. Researchers need thousands of chips with sufficient precision and the right materials.

To close this gap, PoreForge uses nanofabrication tools that enable rapid prototyping without expensive cleanroom facilities. Parallelization is used to increase the nanopore density on each chip. The team has succeeded in integrating a high number of solid-state nanopores into a single microfluidic chip; this increases measurement throughput while improving signal quality.