Synthetic nanocage formed by rhodium-organic cuboctahedra: For single molecule detection in lipid bilayer

This paper describes a strategy for single molecule detection using a synthetic metal-organic cage embedded into bilayer lipid membrane. A single molecule detection based on biological nanopore (such as channel membrane proteins) has been studied as a high sensitive biosensor. However, the size of the biological nanopore is difficult to control because of their inherent structure. In this paper, we synthesized metal-organic polyhedra which has ~ 0.6 nm nanopore as a nanocage. The ion transport behaviors were also investigated.