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DNA Origami-Mediated Substrate Nanopatterning of Inorganic Structures for Sensing Applications
Published on: September 27, 2019
Aviram-Ratner rectifying mechanism for DNA base-pair sequencing through graphene nanogaps
Luis A Agapito1, Jacob Gayles, Christian Wolowiec
1Department of Physics and W M Keck Computational Materials Theory Center, California State University Northridge, Northridge, CA 91330, USA. luis.agapito@gmail.com
None:
We demonstrate that biological molecules such as Watson-Crick DNA base pairs can behave as biological Aviram-Ratner electrical rectifiers because of the spatial separation and weak hydrogen bonding between the nucleobases. We have performed a parallel computational implementation of the ab initio non-equilibrium Green's function (NEGF) theory to determine the electrical response of graphene--base-pair--graphene junctions. The results show an asymmetric (rectifying) current-voltage response for the cytosine-guanine base pair adsorbed on a graphene nanogap. In sharp contrast we find a symmetric response for the thymine-adenine case. We propose applying the asymmetry of the current-voltage response as a sensing criterion to the technological challenge of rapid DNA sequencing via graphene nanogaps.
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