Adjustable Nanofluidic Channels by Tunnel Cracking of a Constrained Brittle Layer

There is widespread and rapidly increasing interest in adopting nanofluidics as a strategy for developing new capabilities in various scientific areas. A fast, easy, and inexpensive method for creating nanochannels may address technical limitations associated with the limited availability of conventional nanofabrication technologies and contribute to expanding the application of nanofluidics to areas of biological or chemical interest. For example, there is considerable interest in the controlled confinement and manipulation of single polymeric or bio-molecules (e.g., DNA) for analysis. Motivated by this, we present here a cracking-based method for fabrication of adjustable nanofluidic channels.