Abstract

Bottom-up nanofabrication, although still in its early stages with formidable challenges, is considered a potential alternative method to address the limitations of traditional top-down techniques by offering benefits including process simplification, cost reduction, and environmental friendliness. DNA-templated nanofabrication, one of the most powerful bottom-up methods, presents an innovative way to create advanced nanoelectronics. In this approach, nanomaterials with specific electronic, photonic, or other functions are precisely and programmably positioned on DNA nanostructures from a disordered collection of smaller parts. These self-assembled structures offer significant potential for improving many fields such as biosensing, drug delivery and electronic device manufacturing. This dissertation reports the successful fabrication of semiconductor-metal Schottky contacts using a DNA origami scaffold. The scaffold, consisting of DNA strands organized into a specific bar-shaped architecture, facilitates the competitive arrangement of gold and cadmium sulfide nanorods, forming heterojunctions, and addressing previous limitations in semiconductor nanomaterial availability. Electrical characterization reveals nonlinear Schottky barrier properties, with electrical conductivity ranging from 1.1 to 3.7 — 104 S/m, marking a several million-fold increase over prior work. This research establishes the feasibility of using cadmium sulfide prepared as a n-type semiconductor material and an innovative self-assembly approach for making nanoscale Schottky contacts, paving the way for the future development of DNA-based nanoscale logic gate circuits.

Degree

PhD

College and Department

Computational, Mathematical, and Physical Sciences; Chemistry and Biochemistry

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2024-05-28

Document Type

Dissertation

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd13226

Keywords

DNA nanofabrication, DNA origami, self-assembly, heterojunction, Schottky barrier, cadmium sulfide nanorods, gold nanorods, n-type semiconductor, electron beam-induced deposition

Language

english

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