Selective detections of single-viruses using solid-state nanopores

Rapid diagnosis of flu before symptom onsets can revolutionize our health through diminishing a risk for serious complication as well as preventing infectious disease outbreak. Sensor sensitivity and selectivity are key to accomplish this goal as the number of virus is quite small at the early stage of infection. Here we report on label-free electrical diagnostics of influenza based on nanopore analytics that distinguishes individual virions by their distinct physical features. We accomplish selective resistive-pulse sensing of single flu virus having negative surface charges in a physiological media by exploiting electroosmotic flow to filter contaminants at the Si3N4 pore orifice. We demonstrate identifications of allotypes with 68% accuracy at the single-virus level via pattern classifications of the ionic current signatures. We also show that this discriminability becomes > 95% under a binomial distribution theorem by ensembling the pulse data of > 20 virions. This simple mechanism is versatile for point-of-care tests of a wide range of flu types.