First-Principle Studies of Silicene Nanostructures for DNA Base Detection

Graphene’s success for nanopore DNA sequencing has shown that it is possible to explore other potential single- and few-atom thick layers of 2D elemental materials beyond graphene, and also that these materials can exhibit fascinating and technologically useful properties for DNA base detection that are superior to those of graphene. The buckled honeycomb lattice of silicene monolayer makes it an ideal material for rapid DNA sensing applications. Using density functional theory, we modeled and studied the interaction of silicene nanopore and nanoribbon with DNA bases. The ability of silicene to distinguish the individual DNA bases is then compared with graphene using three evaluation metrics, namely, binding energy, band gap, and density of states. In this talk, we will present the results of our research findings.