Overview of the materials design and sensing strategies of nanopore devices

Nanopore platform holds a great fascination that attracts increasing interests in research and leads the development of various domains. Herein we first briefly introduce the development, generation and challenges in nanopore sensing. Afterward, we overview the nanopore substrates from the material perspective that is different from the general classification by categorizing the pore carrier materials into five types. They are biological pores (including protein, peptide, DNA origami and G-quadruplexes), organic nanopores (including polymer, chemically synthesized pores, COFs, and helical self-assembled pores), inorganic pores (involving silicon-based, carbon-based, and 2D pores), metallic nanopores (metal, metallic oxide, MOFs and MXenes) and hybrid nanopores. We then review the common sensing principle in nanopore devices (resistive sensing, current rectification, nano-gap tunneling, FET, electroosmosis, optoelectronic readout and multiple nanoarrays), followed by the implementations of nanopore techniques in the matter and molecular identification and interplay, catalysis, single-molecule reaction mechanism, molecular conformation dynamics, data storage, and theoretical simulation among others. We finally conclude and propose potential substrate materials, design strategies and new technique combinations in nanopore devices and sensing areas.