This technology is a method to engineer self-assembling nucleic acid nanostructures for use in circuit design and assembly.
Nanoscale circuits are essential to modern electronics, with smaller circuits resulting in improved efficiency and performance. However, the current manufacturing process for electronics is prohibitively costly and limited by the minimum size that metals may be carved into circuit patterns. There is a critical unmet need for cost-effective, atomic-scale, self-assembling and self-repairing electronic devices. The unique molecular properties and small size of nucleic acids enable DNA nanowires to overcome these limitations. However, there are currently no available technologies with DNA nanotechnology to create functional nanostructures capable of conducting electricity for use in circuit assembly.
This technology is a method for generating electrically-conductive nanostructures from biosynthetic materials. These nanostructures rely on the presence of site-specific nucleotide mismatches sealed with single metal ions, such as silver or mercury, to form an electronically-functionalized nanostructure via self-assembly. The small size of DNA and other nucleic acids combined with their ability to self-assemble leads to nanostructures with reduced size and minimal resources, with the potential for fabrication by biosynthesis. As a result, these nanostructures offer a cost-effective, improved method for circuit design and assembly.
This technology has been validated by measuring conductance in polycytosine DNA nanowires with embedded silver ions.
Patent Pending (US 20170294608)
IR CU16272
Licensing Contact: Richard Nguyen