Divacancies are among the most important defects that alter the charge transport properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT), and we here study, using ab initio calculations, their properties. Two structures were investigated, one that has two pentagons side by side with an octagon (585) and another composed of three pentagons and three heptagons (555777). We investigate their stability as a function of tube diameter, and calculate their charge transport properties. The 585 defect is less stable in graphene due to two broken bonds in the pentagons. We estimate that the 555777 becomes more stable than the 585 for a diameter of about 40 Å (53 Å) for an armchair (zigzag) SWNTs, indicating that they will prevail in large diameter multiwalled carbon nanotubes and graphene ribbons.

Recent advances in the fabrication of silicene devices have raised exciting prospects for practical applications such as gas sensing. We investigated the gas detection performance of silicene nanosensors for four different gases (NO, NO 2 , NH 3 , and CO) in terms of sensitivity and selectivity, employing density functional theory and nonequilibrium Green's function method. The structural configurations, adsorption sites, binding energies and charge transfer of all studied gas molecules on silicene nanosensors are systematically discussed in this work. Our results indicate that pristine silicene exhibits strong sensitivity for NO and NO 2 , while it appears incapable of sensing CO and NH 3 . In an attempt to overcome sensitivity limitations due to weak van der Waals interaction of those latter gas molecules on the device, we doped pristine silicene with either B or N atoms, leading to enhanced binding energy as well as charge transfer, and subsequently a significant improvement of sensitivity. A distinction between the four studied gases based on the silicene devices appears possible, and thus these promise to be next-generation nanosensors for highly sensitive and selective gas detection.

Silicene, a hexagonal buckled 2D allotrope of silicon, shows potential as a platform for numerous new applications, and may allow for easier integration with existing silicon-based microelectronics than graphene. Here, we show that silicene could function as an electrical DNA sequencing device. We investigated the stability of this novel nano-bio system, its electronic properties and the pronounced effects on the transverse electronic transport, i.e., changes in the transmission and the conductance caused by adsorption of each nucleobase, explored by us through the non-equilibrium Green's function method. Intriguingly, despite the relatively weak interaction between nucleobases and silicene, significant changes in the transmittance at zero bias are predicted by us, in particular for the two nucleobases cytosine and guanine. Our findings suggest that silicene could be utilized as an integrated-circuit biosensor as part of a lab-on-a-chip device for DNA sequencing.

We report the results of a theoretical study of graphene/BN/graphene and BN/graphene/BN trilayers using the van-der-Waals-corrected density functional theory in conjunction with the non-equilibrium Green's Function method. These trilayer systems formed from graphene and BN exhibit distinct stacking-dependent features in their ground state electronic structure and response to an applied electric field perpendicular to the trilayer planes. The graphene/BN/graphene system shows a negligible gap in the electronic band structure that increases for the AAA and ABA stackings under an external electric field, while the zero-field band gap of BN/graphene/BN remains unaffected by the electric field. When both types of trilayer systems are contacted with gold electrodes, a metal-like conduction is predicted in the low-field regime, which changes to a p-type conduction with an increase in the applied perpendicular bias field.

One of the challenges for next generation DNA sequencing is to have a robust, stable, and reproducible nanodevice. In this work, we propose how to improve the sensing of DNA nucleobase using functionalized graphene nanogap as a solid state device. Two types of edge functionalization, namely, either hydrogen or nitrogen, were considered. We showed that, independent of species involved in the edge passivation, the highest-to-lowest order of the nucleobase transmissions is not altered, but the intensity is affected by several orders of magnitude. Our results show that nitrogen edge tends to p-dope graphene, and most importantly, it contributes with resonance states close to the Fermi level, which can be associated with the increased conductance. Finally, the translocation process of nucleobases passing through the nanogap was also investigated by varying their position from a certain height (from +3 to −3 Å) with respect to the graphene sheet to show that nitrogen-terminated sheets have enhanced sensitivity, as moving the nucleobase by approximately 1 Å reduces the conductance by up to 3 orders of magnitude.

Modified tiny hydrogen-terminated diamond structures, known as diamondoids, show a high efficiency in sensing DNA molecules. These diamond cages, as recently proposed, could offer functionalization possibilities for gold junction electrodes. In this investigation, we report on diamondoid-functionalized electrodes, showing that such a device would have a high potential in sensing and sequencing DNA. The smallest diamondoid including an amine modification was chosen for the functionalization. Here, we report on the quantum tunneling signals across diamondoid-functionalized Au(111) electrodes. Our work is based on quantum-transport calculations and predicts the expected signals arising from different DNA units within the break junctions. Different gating voltages are proposed in order to tune the sensitivity of the functionalized electrodes with respect to specific nucleotides. The relation of this sensitivity to the coupling or decoupling of the electrodes is discussed. Our results also shed light on the sensing capability of such a device in distinguishing the DNA nucleotides, in their natural and mutated forms.

a b s t r a c tTopological line defects in graphene synthesized in a highly controlled manner open up new research directions for nanodevice applications. Here, we investigate two types of extended line defects in graphene, namely octagonal/pentagonal and heptagonal/pentagonal reconstructions. A combination of density functional theory and non-equilibrium Green's function methods was utilized in order to explore the application potential of this system as an electronic gas sensor. Our findings show that the electric current is confined to the line defect through gate voltage control, which combined with the enhanced chemical reactivity at the grain boundary, makes this system a highly promising candidate for gas sensor applications. As a proof of principle, we evaluated the sensitivity of a prototypical device toward NO 2 molecule, demonstrating that it is indeed possible to reliably detect the target molecule.

The feasibility of synthesizing unnatural DNA/RNA has recently been demonstrated, giving rise to new perspectives and challenges in the emerging field of synthetic biology, DNA data storage, and even the...