Transverse conductance of DNA nucleotides in a graphene nanogap from first principles

Abstract

The fabrication of nanopores in atomically-thin graphene has recently been achieved and translocation of DNA has been demonstrated. Taken together with an earlier proposal to use graphene nanogaps for the purpose of DNA sequencing, this approach can resolve the technical problem of achieving single-base resolution in electronic nucleobase detection. We have theoretically evaluated the performance of a graphene nanogap setup for the purpose of whole-genome sequencing, by employing density functional theory and the non-equilibrium Green's function method to investigate the transverse conductance properties of nucleotides inside the gap. In particular, we determined the electrical tunneling current variation at finite bias due to changes in the nucleotides orientation and lateral position. Although the resulting tunneling current is found to fluctuate over several orders of magnitudes, a distinction between the four DNA bases appears possible, thus ranking the approach promising for rapid whole-genome sequencing applications.

12 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Electric Field Effect in Atomically Thin Carbon Films
• The electronic properties of graphene
• Graphene: A sub-nanometer trans-electrode membrane
• Electron beam nanosculpting of suspended graphene sheets
• Functionalized nanopore-embedded electrodes for rapid DNA sequencing

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Silicene as a new ultrafast DNA sequencing device
• Recent progress in atomistic simulation of electrical current DNA sequencing
• First-principles vs. semi-empirical modeling of global and local electronic transport properties of graphene nanopore-based sensors for DNA sequencing
• Identification of DNA Bases Using Nanopores Created in Finite-Size Nanoribbons from Graphene, Phosphorene, and Silicene
• Nanopore-Based DNA Sequencing Sensors and CMOS Readout Approaches