Kavli Institute

The publication closely follows a paper by a Dutch group that also showed DNA traversing a nanopore. The Penn team used a method called chemical vapor deposition to grow the graphene on a copper substrate, while the Dutch team used an exfoliation approach to construct its nanopore.

The team's next step is to use the graphene as not only the membrane, but also as the electrodes, and to slow down the DNA so they can read each individual base as it passes through the pore.