Electronic fingerprints of DNA bases on graphene

Towfiq Ahmed; Svetlana Kilina; Tanmoy Das; Jason T Haraldsen; John J Rehr; Alexander V Balatsky

doi:10.1021/nl2039315

Electronic fingerprints of DNA bases on graphene

Nano Lett. 2012 Feb 8;12(2):927-31. doi: 10.1021/nl2039315. Epub 2012 Jan 24.

Authors

Towfiq Ahmed¹, Svetlana Kilina, Tanmoy Das, Jason T Haraldsen, John J Rehr, Alexander V Balatsky

Affiliation

¹ Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA. atowfiq@u.washington.edu

PMID: 22257137
DOI: 10.1021/nl2039315

Abstract

We calculate the electronic local density of states (LDOS) of DNA nucleotide bases (A,C,G,T), deposited on graphene. We observe significant base-dependent features in the LDOS in an energy range within a few electronvolts of the Fermi level. These features can serve as electronic fingerprints for the identification of individual bases in scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) experiments that perform image and site dependent spectroscopy on biomolecules. Thus the fingerprints of DNA-graphene hybrid structures may provide an alternative route to DNA sequencing using STS.

Publication types

Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

DNA / chemistry*
Electrons*
Graphite / chemistry*
Microscopy, Scanning Tunneling
Nucleotides / chemistry

Substances

Nucleotides
Graphite
DNA