Electrical Conductance in Biological Molecules

Abstract

Nucleic acids and proteins are not only biologically important polymers: They have recently been recognized as novel functional materials surpassing in many aspects the conventional ones. Although Herculean efforts have been undertaken to unravel fine functioning mechanisms of the biopolymers in question, there is still much more to be done. This particular paper presents the topic of biomolecular charge transport, with a particular focus on charge transfer/transport in DNA and protein molecules. Here the experimentally revealed details, as well as the presently available theories, of charge transfer/transport along these biopolymers are critically reviewed and analyzed. A summary of the active research in this field is also given, along with a number of practical recommendations.)Received: ((will be filled in by the editorial staff))Revised: ((will be filled in by the editorial staff))

Charged particle separation by an electrically tunable nanoporous membrane

“…where E = −∇φ is the electric field, K CM is the Clausius-Mossotti factor. Since the conductivity of the particle is usually much smaller than that of the solution [31][32][33][34], we set K CM = −0.5. The third contribution in equation 8comes from the external electric energy φ( r i ) with the electric potential φ calculated from the self-consistent solution of PNP (equations (1) and (2)).…”

Stencil Lithography for Scalable Micro- and Nanomanufacturing

“…The characterization of nanoelectronics such as carbon nanotubes and graphene-based transistors heavily relies on the stability and minimization of contact resistance [ 49 ]. Metallic contacts to these nanomaterials can be patterned with stencil lithography without using complicated processes such as ultrasonic welding [ 50 ] or molecular linkers [ 51 ]. Agarwal et al [ 52 ] used a silicon stencil mask to pattern electrodes on the surface of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs).…”

Modeling the bandstructures of B-DNA base stacks

“…These predictions are in agreement with observations reported in the literature. 30,[43][44][45][46][47] On the other hand, the large bandwidths obtained for the eclipsed bands predict relatively small effective masses, and consequently, large mobilities. In addition, the magnitudes of these parameters turn out to be similar for all the eclipsed NSs.…”