Electronics based on biomolecules
DIPC Seminars
- Speaker
-
Linda Zotti, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
- When
-
2019/03/05
13:00 - Place
- Donostia International Physics Center
- Add to calendar
- iCal
The field of BioMolecular Electronics aims at using biomolecules as building
blocks for novel nanoscale devices. A huge variety of systems is available for
study in this context, ranging from nanometer-scale individual peptides to
millimeter-scale bacterial nanowires. In particular, proteins have been the
focus of numerous recent studies and considerable effort has been devoted to
analyzing their performance as conductors when incorporated in solid-state
junctions. Indeed, it has been shown by several studies that electron
transport through proteins is surprisingly effective. In this talk, I will
discuss the work I have carried out in this topic, focusing on the blue-copper
azurin extracted from Pseudomonas aeruginosa, for which insertion of mutations
was found to affect the gate-dependence behaviour considerably. I will present
our efforts towards understanding the origin of this effect from a theoretical
perspective, from both the point of view of the electronic structure [1] and
the geometrical arrangement [2]. Furthermore, I will discuss recent
theoretical results from my work obtained on the conductance of individual
heptapeptides, and I will compare their performance to that of other molecules
of similar length [3].
[1] C. Romero-Muñiz, M. Ortega, J. G. Vilhena, I. DÃez Pérez, J. C.
Cuevas,a; R. Pérez and L. A. Zotti, “Ab-initio Electronic Structure
Calculations of Entire Blue Copper Azurinsâ€, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 20,
30392 (2018).
[2] M. P. Ruiz; A. C. Aragonès; N. Camarero; J. G. Vilhena; M. Ortega; L. A.
Zotti; R. Pérez; J. C. Cuevas; P. Gorostiza; I. DÃez-Pérez,
“Bioengineering a Single-Protein Junctionâ€, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 139- 43,
15337 (2017).
[3] L. A. Zotti; J. C. Cuevas, “Electron transport through homopeptides: are
they really good conductors?â€, ACS omega. 3, 3778 (2018).