Identification of DNA nucleotides by conductance and tunnelling current variation through borophene nanogaps

Abstract

Rapid and inexpensive DNA sequencing is critical to biomedical research and healthcare for the accomplishment of personalized medicine. Solid-state nanopores and nanogaps have marshalled themselves in the fascinating paradigm of nano-research since the advent of its application in DNA sequencing by analyzing the quantum conductance and electric current signals. In this study, the feasibility of the considered borophene nanogaps for DNA sequencing purposes via the electronic tunnelling current approach was investigated by utilizing combined density functional theory with non-equilibrium Green's function (DFT-NEGF) techniques. The interaction energy (Ei) and the charge density difference (CDD) plots exploit the charge modulation around the nanogap edges due to the presence of each nucleotide. Our results revealed a distinct variation in the tunnelling conductance, as a characteristic fingerprint of each nucleotide at the Fermi level. The calculated tunnelling current variation across the nanogap under an applied bias voltage was also significant due to the effective coupling of nucleotides with the electrode edges. The current was in the picoampere (pA) range, which was fairly higher than the electrical background noise and also experimentally detectable by the canning tunnelling microscopy (STM) technique. Our findings demonstrated that in the borophene nanopore vs. nanogap scenario, the nanogap has several advantages and is a more promising nanobiosensor. Moreover, we also compared our results with various previous experimental and theoretical reports on nanogaps as well as nanopores for gaining better insights. © 2022 The Royal Society of Chemistry.