Integrating Molecular Structures into the Macroscopic World by a Combination of Microsystem Technology and Self-Assembly Methods

Abstract

Bottom-up approaches for the fabrication of nanostructures represent an interesting alternative to overcome the miniaturization limits encountered by the traditional top-down technology. However, molecular structures exist usually in solution and without defined interface to the macroscopic world. We present an approach using self-assembly methods on microstructured chip substrate to integrate molecular structures into macroscopic technology Therefore, individual long DNA molecules were positioned between microstructured electrodes on a chip substrate, and will serve as support for further construction steps. This approach is complemented by the use of gold nanoparticles. These particles have unique optical and electronic properties, which are addressed in combination with the self-assembly capabilities of DNA. So DNA nanoparticle conjugates are utilized for novel optical and electrical DNA detection methods. The construction scheme and first experiments toward s a nanopartide-based single-electron tunneling transistor (SET) will be presented. The development of a new DNA-cutting technique with the potential of massive parallelization using the energy-conversion on nanoparticles is discussed.