AVS 47th International Symposium
    Electronics Tuesday Sessions
       Session EL+NS-TuM

Invited Paper EL+NS-TuM9
Direct Measurements of Electrical Transport through DNA Molecules

Tuesday, October 3, 2000, 11:00 am, Room 312

Session: Molecular Electronics
Presenter: D. Porath, Tel Aviv University, Israel & Delft Univ. of Tech., The Netherlands
Authors: D. Porath, Tel Aviv University, Israel & Delft Univ. of Tech., The Netherlands
A. Bezryadin, Harvard University
S. de Vries, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
C. Dekker, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Correspondent: Click to Email
Is DNA a conductor for electrical charges? This question has been heavily debated over the past few years, spurred by optical experiments that measured fluorescence quenching for DNA molecules and recent electrical measurements. Here we present measurements of electrical transport through short and well-defined DNA molecules that show large-gap semiconducting behavior. A 10.4 nm long, double-stranded poly(G)-poly(C) DNA molecule is connected to two metal nanoelectrodes that are separated by 8 nm. Nonlinear current-voltage curves with a voltage gap at low bias are observed at ambient conditions as well as in vacuum and at cryogenic temperatures. The voltage dependence of the differential conductance exhibits a peak structure, suggesting that transport of charge carriers is mediated by the molecular energy bands of DNA. Recent STM measurement on similar DNA molecules will be shown as well.