Amorim Rodrigo G, Scheicher Ralph H
Division of Materials Theory, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Box 516, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden.
Nanotechnology. 2015 Apr 17;26(15):154002. doi: 10.1088/0957-4484/26/15/154002. Epub 2015 Mar 23.
Silicene, a hexagonal buckled 2D allotrope of silicon, shows potential as a platform for numerous new applications, and may allow for easier integration with existing silicon-based microelectronics than graphene. Here, we show that silicene could function as an electrical DNA sequencing device. We investigated the stability of this novel nano-bio system, its electronic properties and the pronounced effects on the transverse electronic transport, i.e., changes in the transmission and the conductance caused by adsorption of each nucleobase, explored by us through the non-equilibrium Green's function method. Intriguingly, despite the relatively weak interaction between nucleobases and silicene, significant changes in the transmittance at zero bias are predicted by us, in particular for the two nucleobases cytosine and guanine. Our findings suggest that silicene could be utilized as an integrated-circuit biosensor as part of a lab-on-a-chip device for DNA sequencing.
硅烯是硅的一种六角形褶皱二维同素异形体，作为众多新应用的平台具有潜力，并且与石墨烯相比，它可能更容易与现有的硅基微电子器件集成。在此，我们表明硅烯可以用作电DNA测序装置。我们研究了这个新型纳米生物系统的稳定性、其电子特性以及对横向电子输运的显著影响，即我们通过非平衡格林函数方法探究的每个核碱基吸附引起的透射率和电导率变化。有趣的是，尽管核碱基与硅烯之间的相互作用相对较弱，但我们预测在零偏压下透射率会有显著变化，特别是对于胞嘧啶和鸟嘌呤这两种核碱基。我们的研究结果表明，硅烯可用作集成电路生物传感器，作为用于DNA测序的芯片实验室装置的一部分。
