Lily Stanley with Xuan Gao

Nanowire Transistors for DNA Sensing

As electrical devices have gotten smaller nanowires have become a novel material for use in fabricating these devices. Using nanowires transistors can be made on the nano scale. I will be using these transistors to create a biomolecule sensor, with the goal of highly sensitive detection of DNA. The nanowires will be synthesized through a ‘bottom up’ (chemistry-based) approach and the nanowire transistors fabricated using lithography techniques. Both physical adsorption and covalent bonding will be explored to attach probe peptide nucleic acid (PNA) onto nanowire surface to capture the target DNA. Electrical measurement of the nanowire transistor will be used to detect and study DNA hybridization. Effects like base mismatch between probe and target strands and charge screening in ionic solutions will be investigated as DNAs hybridize/dehybridze on nanowire surface.