Complementary base-pair-facilitated electron tunneling for electrically pinpointing complementary nucleobases.

ABSTRACT: Molecular tips in scanning tunneling microscopy can directly detect intermolecular electron tunneling between sample and tip molecules and reveal the tunneling facilitation through chemical interactions that provide overlap of respective electronic wave functions, that is, hydrogen-bond, metal-coordination-bond, and charge-transfer interactions. Nucleobase molecular tips were prepared by chemical modification of underlying metal tips with thiol derivatives of adenine, guanine, cytosine, and uracil and the outmost single nucleobase adsorbate probes intermolecular electron tunneling to or from a sample nucleobase molecule. We found that the electron tunneling between a sample nucleobase and its complementary nucleobase molecular tip was much facilitated compared with its noncomplementary cou

SUBMITTER: Ohshiro T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1324978 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature