Two dimensional molecular electronics spectroscopy for molecular fingerprinting, DNA sequencing, and cancerous DNA recognition.

Abstract

Laser-driven molecular spectroscopy of low spatial resolution is widely used, while electronic current-driven molecular spectroscopy of atomic scale resolution has been limited because currents provide only minimal information. However, electron transmission of a graphene nanoribbon on which a molecule is adsorbed shows molecular fingerprints of Fano resonances, i.e., characteristic features of frontier orbitals and conformations of physisorbed molecules. Utilizing these resonance profiles, here we demonstrate two-dimensional molecular electronics spectroscopy (2D MES). The differential conductance with respect to bias and gate voltages not only distinguishes different types of nucleobases for DNA sequencing but also recognizes methylated nucleobases which could be related to cancerous cell growth. This 2D MES could open an exciting field to recognize single molecule signatures at atomic resolution. The advantages of the 2D MES over the one-dimensional (1D) current analysis can be comparable to those of 2D NMR over 1D NMR analysis.