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Published on: May 2, 2014
Preparation and characterization of conductive and photoluminescent DNA-templated polyindole nanowires
Reda Hassanien1, Mariam Al-Hinai, Said A Farha Al-Said
1Chemical Nanoscience Laboratories, School of Chemistry, Bedson Building, Engineering and Advanced Materials, Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne NE1 7RU, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
Polyindole (PIn) nanowires were formed on a lambda-DNA template by chemical oxidation of indole using aqueous FeCl3. The resulting nanowires are smooth, regular, conductive and had diameters in the range of 5-30 nm. These features allow them to be aligned by molecular combing and studied by scanned conductance microscopy, conductive AFM, and two-terminal I-V measurements. Using this combination of measurements, we find that the conductivity of PIn/DNA nanowires is between 2.5 and 40 S cm(-1) at room temperature, which is substantially greater than that in previous reports on the bulk polyindole conductivity (typically 10(-2)-10(-1) S cm(-1)). The conductance at zero bias shows an Arrhenius-type of dependence on temperature over the range of 233 to 373 K, and the values observed upon heating and cooling are repeatable within 5%; this behavior is consistent with a hopping mechanism of conductivity.
