Tight-binding modeling of charge migration in DNA devices

Abstract

Long range charge transfer experiments in DNA oligomers and the subsequently measured -- and very diverse -- transport response of DNA wires in solid state experiments exemplifies the need for a thorough theoretical understanding of charge migration in DNA-based natural and artificial materials. Here we present a review of tight-binding models for DNA conduction which have the intrinsic merit of containing more structural information than plain rate-equation models while still retaining sufficient detail of the electronic properties. This allows for simulations of transport properties to be more manageable with respect to density functional theory methods or correlated first principle algorithms.