Enhanced Optical Spectroscopy for Multiplexed DNA and Protein-Sequencing with Plasmonic Nanopores: Challenges and Prospects

Plasmonics is the discipline that investigates the use of collective oscillations of conductive electrons in metallic nanostructures, called surface plasmons (SPs), to realize a large set of devices to be applied in sensing, nanomedicine, metamaterials, energy harvesting, and many others. During the past decade, several examples of plasmonic platforms have been proposed for single-molecule studies. Among others, plasmonic nanopores, i.e., sub-100 nm apertures connecting two compartments, are finding more and more interest as a specific family of solid-state nanopores with multiple functionalities. While the reader can find exhaustive details on working principles, fabrication, and applications of plasmonic nanopores for biosensing in recent reviews, here we focus on the applications of plasmonic nanopores as a platform for enhanced spectroscopy of single DNA and protein molecules, discussing in detail which limitations must be overcome to enable large scale multiplexing sequencing.