Abstract
The use of self-assembly techniques may open new possibilities in scaling down electronic circuits to their ultimate limits. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) nanotechnology has already demonstrated that it can provide valuable tools for the creation of nanostructures of arbitrary shape, therefore presenting an ideal platform for the development of nanoelectronic circuits. So far, however, the electronic properties of DNA nanostructures are mostly insulating, thus limiting the use of the nanostructures in electronic circuits. Therefore, methods have been investigated that use the DNA nanostructures as templates for the deposition of electrically conducting materials along the DNA strands. The most simple such structure is given by metallic nanowires formed by deposition of metals along the DNA nanostructures. Here, we review the fabrication and the characterization of the electronic properties of nanowires, which were created using these methods.
Highlights
The self-assembly and molecular recognition abilities of Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) may solve the problems of wiring and positioning at the nanoscale [1,2,3,4,5,6]
RNA or ss-DNA fragments can be used for the surface functionalization of the particles; the complementarity of these fragments with fragments on other nanoparticles or on, e.g., a DNA nanostructure placed on a surface, leads to the arrangement of the nanoparticles by self-organization
DNA nanostructures, which are solidly attached to a substrate, would be electrically shorted when evaporated with a metal, unless very anisotropic deposition is granted and the height of the DNA nanostructure exceeds the height of the evaporated metal
Summary
The self-assembly and molecular recognition abilities of DNA may solve the problems of wiring and positioning at the nanoscale [1,2,3,4,5,6]. The physical and chemical properties make DNA the perfect candidate for its use as interconnector down to dimensions on the order of 2 nm by building metallic nanowires and linking them to various nanomaterials such as semiconductor quantum dots, and metallic and magnetic nanoparticles. Voltage sensing was achieved by using voltage sensitive DNA origami structures, which convert voltages into optical signals [8] These examples show that the precise positioning of nanoscale particles opens promising possibilities for the interconversion of optical and electronic signals at the nanoscale. The main challenge for the development of optoelectronic circuits is in the development of conducting structures formed via DNA nanotechnology First steps towards this goal have been undertaken using metalized DNA nanostructures, which are the topic of the current review.
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