Room temperature negative differential resistance in DNA-based molecular devices

Abstract

A molecular device fabricated from metallic deoxyribonucleic acid (M-DNA) exhibits a negative differential resistance (NDR) behavior. When two gold electrodes were connected by Ni2+-chelated DNA, which was converted from λ-DNA, not only was the conductivity of DNA improved, but a NDR device was formed as a full cyclic voltage sweep was applied to measure its current versus voltage characteristics at room temperature and in an ambient environment. Such electronic characteristics of a M-DNA device may have been caused by the redox reactions of Ni ions. This finding provides a simple way to construct electrical nanodevices from biological molecules.

Interference effects in phtalocyanine controlled by H-H tautomerization: Potential two-terminal unimolecular electronic switch

“…[53][54][55] As a consequence, NDR has been at the focus of a number of recent experimental 56,57 and theoretical [58][59][60] papers. The NDR effect found by Quek et al 58 is explained in terms of gold electrodes supporting molecule-electrode contact-driven NDR, where the coupling to the rather narrow bands of 1-D Au chains stretched on the surface plays an important role.…”

Exploration and characterization of the memcapacitor and memristor properties of Ni–DNA nanowire devices

“…22 Recently, Ni-DNA molecules 50-100 nm in length 22,24 were shown to exhibit a negative differential resistance (NDR) effect at room temperature, a characteristic of memristive devices. 21 This behavior may be attributed to the redox current (I red ) of Ni ions. 24 Both chelated Ni ions and the π-stacking bases in the DNA duplex were found to be essential for charge transport in Ni-DNA nanowires.…”

“…21,24 The ratio of redox species of Ni ions (Ni 2+ /Ni 3+ ) can be changed when the external biases exceed the threshold of redox potential of Ni ions, 4 indicating that the Ni-DNA nanowire may exhibit a capacitive effect. In this study, a micrometer-long Ni-DNA nanowire is developed and characterized to explore its potential in the development of nanowire-based electronic devices.…”

“…19,20 The conducting current of conventional nanowires is determined by various factors including the intrinsic composition, length, width 21,22 and chirality 23 of the wires and the external bias. The impedances of conventional nanowires are invariant because they have fixed intrinsic composition, length and width.…”

Topological states and quantized current in helical organic molecules

“…The electron transport along helical molecules, such as DNA and α-helical protein, has been receiving much attention among the scientific communities [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17], because this subject can enrich our knowledge regarding the electronic properties of low-dimensional systems due to the unique helix structure and provides valuable information for understanding the biological processes in living organisms [18][19][20]. It was reported by direct charge transport experiments that double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) could exhibit fascinating physical phenomena, such as the proximity-induced superconductivity [21], the negative differential resistance [22], and the piezoelectric effect [23]. Additionally, it was shown that both dsDNA and α-helical protein can behave as electric field-effect transistors [24][25][26][27] and as efficient spin filters [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35].…”