TY - JOUR
T1 - Backbone charge transport in double-stranded DNA
AU - Zhuravel, Roman
AU - Huang, Haichao
AU - Polycarpou, Georgia
AU - Polydorides, Savvas
AU - Motamarri, Phani
AU - Katrivas, Liat
AU - Rotem, Dvir
AU - Sperling, Joseph
AU - Zotti, Linda A.
AU - Kotlyar, Alexander B.
AU - Cuevas, Juan Carlos
AU - Gavini, Vikram
AU - Skourtis, Spiros S.
AU - Porath, Danny
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
PY - 2020/10/1
Y1 - 2020/10/1
N2 - Understanding charge transport in DNA molecules is a long-standing problem of fundamental importance across disciplines1,2. It is also of great technological interest due to DNA’s ability to form versatile and complex programmable structures. Charge transport in DNA-based junctions has been reported using a wide variety of set-ups2–4, but experiments so far have yielded seemingly contradictory results that range from insulating5–8 or semiconducting9,10 to metallic-like behaviour11. As a result, the intrinsic charge transport mechanism in molecular junction set-ups is not well understood, which is mainly due to the lack of techniques to form reproducible and stable contacts with individual long DNA molecules. Here we report charge-transport measurements through single 30-nm-long double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) molecules with an experimental set-up that enables us to address individual molecules repeatedly and to measure the current–voltage characteristics from 5 K up to room temperature. Strikingly, we observed very high currents of tens of nanoamperes, which flowed through both homogeneous and non-homogeneous base-pair sequences. The currents are fairly temperature independent in the range 5–60 K and show a power-law decrease with temperature above 60 K, which is reminiscent of charge transport in organic crystals. Moreover, we show that the presence of even a single discontinuity (‘nick’) in both strands that compose the dsDNA leads to complete suppression of the current, which suggests that the backbones mediate the long-distance conduction in dsDNA, contrary to the common wisdom in DNA electronics2–4.
AB - Understanding charge transport in DNA molecules is a long-standing problem of fundamental importance across disciplines1,2. It is also of great technological interest due to DNA’s ability to form versatile and complex programmable structures. Charge transport in DNA-based junctions has been reported using a wide variety of set-ups2–4, but experiments so far have yielded seemingly contradictory results that range from insulating5–8 or semiconducting9,10 to metallic-like behaviour11. As a result, the intrinsic charge transport mechanism in molecular junction set-ups is not well understood, which is mainly due to the lack of techniques to form reproducible and stable contacts with individual long DNA molecules. Here we report charge-transport measurements through single 30-nm-long double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) molecules with an experimental set-up that enables us to address individual molecules repeatedly and to measure the current–voltage characteristics from 5 K up to room temperature. Strikingly, we observed very high currents of tens of nanoamperes, which flowed through both homogeneous and non-homogeneous base-pair sequences. The currents are fairly temperature independent in the range 5–60 K and show a power-law decrease with temperature above 60 K, which is reminiscent of charge transport in organic crystals. Moreover, we show that the presence of even a single discontinuity (‘nick’) in both strands that compose the dsDNA leads to complete suppression of the current, which suggests that the backbones mediate the long-distance conduction in dsDNA, contrary to the common wisdom in DNA electronics2–4.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85089520166&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41565-020-0741-2
DO - 10.1038/s41565-020-0741-2
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C2 - 32807877
AN - SCOPUS:85089520166
SN - 1748-3387
VL - 15
SP - 836
EP - 840
JO - Nature Nanotechnology
JF - Nature Nanotechnology
IS - 10
ER -