Tunable Thermal Switching via DNA-Based Nano Devices

Abstract

DNA has a well-defined structural transition -- the denaturation of its double-stranded form into two single strands -- that strongly affects its thermal transport properties. We show that, according to a widely implemented model for DNA denaturation, one can engineer DNA "heattronic" devices that have a rapidly increasing thermal conductance over a narrow temperature range across the denaturation transition (~350 K). The origin of this rapid increase of conductance, or "switching", is the softening of the lattice and suppression of nonlinear effects as the temperature crosses the transition temperature and DNA denatures. Most importantly, we demonstrate that DNA nanojunctions have a broad range of thermal tunability due to varying the sequence and length, and exploiting the underlying nonlinear behavior. We discuss the role of disorder in the base sequence, as well as the relation to genomic DNA. These results set the basis for developing thermal devices out of materials with nonlinear structural dynamics, as well as understanding the underlying mechanisms of DNA denaturation.

11+5 pages, 4 figures + 1 table

References in corpus (11)

• Phononics: Manipulating heat flow with electronic analogs and beyond
• Controlling the energy flow in nonlinear lattices: a model for a thermal rectifier
• Thermal memory: a storage of phononic information
• Heat conduction in the disordered harmonic chain revisited
• Heat Transistor: Demonstration of Gate-Controlled Electron Refrigeration
• The design of a thermal rectifier
• Dynamical model based on finite stacking enthalpies for homogeneous and inhomogeneous DNA thermal denaturation
• Modelling DNA at the mesoscale: a challenge for nonlinear science?
• Driving denaturation: Nanoscale thermal transport as a probe of DNA melting
• Heat conductivity of DNA double helix
• The thermal denaturation of DNA studied with neutron scattering

Cited by in corpus (16)

• Open System Tensor Networks and Kramers' Crossover for Quantum Transport
• Crossover behavior of the thermal conductance and Kramers' transition rate theory
• Topological quantization of energy transport in micro- and nano-mechanical lattices
• Performance of Reservoir Discretizations in Quantum Transport Simulations
• Analytic expressions for the steady-state current with finite extended reservoirs
• Graphene nanopore devices for DNA sequencing: A tight-binding model study
• Accumulative reservoir construction: Bridging continuously relaxed and periodically refreshed extended reservoirs
• Geometry induced local thermal current from cold to hot in a classical harmonic system
• Topology, Landscapes, and Biomolecular Energy Transport
• Transport in a periodically driven tilted lattice via the extended reservoir approach: Stability criterion for recovering the continuum limit
• Thermal conductivity of B-DNA
• On the thermodynamics of DNA in the Peyrard-Bishop-Dauxois model
• The confluence of fractured resonances at points of dynamical, many--body flare
• Thermal properties of composite two-layer systems with a fractal inclusion structure
• Dual current anomalies and quantum transport within extended reservoir simulations
• Approaching the scaling limit of transport through lattices with dephasing