Revista de nanomateriales y nanotecnología molecular

Opportunity for DNA Detection using Nanoparticle-Decorated Graphene Oxide

Ahmad I. Ayesh and Falah Awwad

Opportunity for DNA Detection using Nanoparticle-Decorated Graphene Oxide

Graphene is a monolayer sheet of carbon atoms packed into a twodimensional (2D) honeycomb lattice. In principle, graphene has been studied for sixty years and widely used for describing properties of various carbon-based materials. However, only in 2004, graphene has been experimentally isolated and characterized in a single layer form by Novoselov et al. . Graphene has a unique electronic structure: the conical valence and conduction bands meet at a single point in the momentum space where around this point the energy varies linearly with the magnitude of the momentum. Therefore, charge carriers move through the solid with zero mass and constant velocity, i.e. its electrons move ballistically over submicron distances, even under ambient conditions. The electronic structure rapidly evolves with the number of layers, approaching the 3D limit of graphite already at 10 layers. Since graphene has unusual electronic properties, reduced dimensionality, and good stability, it has enormous potential for use in electronic field effect transistors (FETs).