Patterning and Fabrication of Conductive Nanowires as Interconnects for Nanoelectronic Circuits Using Nucleic Acid Molecules as Templates

摘要

We studied the construction of nanometer-dimension materials from aligned DNA on surfaces. We devised an approach for synthesizing DNA-templated copper nanowires on substrates; these nanostructures have diameters as large as approximately 10 nm and lengths greater than 10 micrometers. We also developed a facile method for reducing nonspecific surface metallization for DNA-templated nanowires; this technique was applied in creating silver nanowires from single- stranded DNA. We further designed substrates with unique spatial addressing to allow the measurement of surface features repeatedly using complementary microscopic techniques (e.g., atomic force and electron microscopy). In addition, we demonstrated the localization of carbon nanotubes onto aligned surface DNA, by using 1-pyrenemethylamine as a bridging compound to facilitate nanotube assembly. Moreover, we devised and evaluated a gas flow cell system for making aligned carbon nanotube arrays on surfaces. We improved upon our initial DNA-nanotube deposition approach by localizing surfactant-wrapped nanotubes onto surface-aligned DNA with a coverage > 80%. Furthermore, we evaluated self-assembling, three-branched DNA nanostructures as three-terminal nanodevice templates; characterized the metallization of these assemblies; and studied the specific localization of nanostructures within these complexes. Lastly, we made and characterized DNA-templated nickel nanowires. Our success in DNA-templated nanowire fabrication should facilitate future developments in nanoelectronics.