Preparation and characterization of conductive and photoluminescent DNA-templated polyindole nanowires.

Hassanien, Reda; Al-Hinai, Mariam; Farha Al-Said, Said A; Little, Ross; Siller, Lidija; Wright, Nicholas G; Houlton, Andrew; Horrocks, Benjamin R · ACS Nano · 2010

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Polyindole (PIn) nanowires were formed on a lambda-DNA template by chemical oxidation of indole using aqueous FeCl3. The resulting nanowires are smooth, regular, conductive and had diameters in the range of 5-30 nm. These features allow them to be aligned by molecular combing and studied by scanned conductance microscopy, conductive AFM, and two-terminal I-V measurements. Using this combination of measurements, we find that the conductivity of PIn/DNA nanowires is between 2.5 and 40 S cm(-1) at room temperature, which is substantially greater than that in previous reports on the bulk polyindole conductivity (typically 10(-2)-10(-1) S cm(-1)). The conductance at zero bias shows an Arrhenius-type of dependence on temperature over the range of 233 to 373 K, and the values observed upon heating and cooling are repeatable within 5%; this behavior is consistent with a hopping mechanism of conductivity.

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