Electronic transport in DNA functionalized graphene sensors

Abstract

A theoretical understanding of the experimental electronic transport phenomena in gas sensors based on DNA functionalized graphene is presented by quantitatively investigating the time-dependent electronic transport in these devices using the nonequilibrium Green's function (NEGF) formalism and tight-binding approximation. The time-dependent zeroth and first order contributions to the current are calculated with derivations of the equation of motion and Dyson equation. The zeroth order contribution is identified as the time-dependent Landauer formula in terms of the slow time variable and the first order contribution is found to be small in this experiment. The current is explicitly calculated by deriving a formula for the transmission function and considering a form for the hopping integral which includes the effect of chemical vapors on the charge distribution of the carbon atoms and the nearest-neighbor carbon-carbon distance $\rm a_{cc}$. Theoretical results are found in agreement with the experimental results. A shift in the Fermi level ($\rm \varepsilon_f$) is calculated, which is a result of shift in the Dirac point due to adsorption of vapors on the DNA functionalized graphene. The work suggests that using the same values of change in $\rm a_{cc}$ due to the four DNA bases for a specific target vapor, the theoretical values of the current response can be predicted for different DNA sequences leading to the application of the graphene sensors as a DNA analyser.