Phys.org February 25, 2022 Researchers at Arizona State University have shown that a protein poised between a pair of electrodes could act as an efficient conductor of electrons. Proteins may have better conductance properties than similar nanowires composed of DNA. The expanded alphabet of 20 amino acids used to construct them offers an enhanced toolkit for nano architects when compared with just four nucleotides making up DNA. The researchers used protein segments in four nanometer increments, ranging from 4-20 nanometers in length. When the protein nanowires exceeded six nanometers in length, their conductance outperformed molecular nanowires. The data showed that […]
Tag Archives: Bioelectronics
Unbreakable bionic glove made from silk for human-machine-interfacing
Nanowerk December 14, 2021 An international team of researchers (Denmark, Finland) has designed a new electronic material called CareGum by mixing silk fibroin and reduced graphene oxide. They used a phenolic glue to facilitate sacrificial and hierarchical hydrogen bonds. The hierarchal bonding scheme gives rise to high mechanical toughness, record-breaking elongation capacity of ≈25 000%, excellent conformability to arbitrary and complex surfaces, 3D printability, a tenfold increase in electrical conductivity, and a fourfold increase in Young’s modulus compared to its pristine counterpart. Since its conductivity is based on ions, CareGum can convey information over longer distances than rigid electronics based […]
Towards self-restoring electronic devices with long DNA molecules
Science Daily November 2, 2021 single-molecule conductance falls off sharply with the length of the molecule so that only extremely short stretches of DNA are useful for electrical measurements. Researchers in Japan achieved an unconventionally high conductivity with a long DNA molecule-based junction in a “zipper” configuration that also shows a remarkable self-restoring ability under electrical failure. The team used a 10-mer and a 90-mer DNA strand to form a zipper-like structure and attached them to either a gold surface or to the metal tip of a scanning tunneling microscope. The separation between the tip and the surface constituted the […]