Non-equilibrium polaron hopping transport through DNA

Abstract

We study the electronic transport through short DNA chains with various sequences of base pairs between voltage-biased leads. The strong coupling of the charge carriers to local vibrations of the base pairs leads to the formation of polarons, and in the relevant temperature range the transport is accomplished by sequential polaron hopping. We calculate the rates for these processes, extending what is known as the $P(E)$-theory of single-electron tunneling to the situation with site-specific local oscillators. The non-equilibrium charge rearrangement along the DNA leads to sequence-dependent current thresholds of the `semi-conducting' current-voltage characteristics and, except for symmetric sequences, to rectifying behavior. The current is thermally activated with activation energy approaching for voltages above the threshold the bulk value (polaron shift or reorganization energy). Our results are consistent with some recent experiments.

8 pages, 5 figures, submitted to PRB, References added

References in corpus (7)

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• Backbone-induced semiconducting behavior in short DNA wires
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• Fluctuation-Facilitated Charge Migration along DNA
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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Charge transport through bio-molecular wires in a solvent: Bridging molecular dynamics and model Hamiltonian approaches
• Structural fluctuations and quantum transport through DNA molecular wires: a combined molecular dynamics and model Hamiltonian approach
• Non-equilibrium electronic structure of interacting single-molecule nanojunctions: vertex corrections and polarization effects for the electron-vibron coupling
• Non-equilibrium inelastic electronic transport: Polarization effects and vertex corrections to the self-consistent Born approximation
• Conductance of DNA molecules: Effects of decoherence and bonding
• Polaron Mass and Electron-Phonon Correlations in the Holstein Model
• Charge correlations in polaron hopping through molecules
• Low temperature spin glass fluctuations: expanding around a spherical approximation
• Non-equilibrium renormalised contacts for transport in nanodevices with interaction: a quasi-particle approach
• Non-equilibrium transport with self-consistent renormalised contacts for a single-molecule nanodevice with electron-vibron interaction
• Hole Conductivity in Heterogeneous DNA Fragments