March 10, 2015 – Plants harvest energy from sunlight using molecules called chromophores that are arranged on a protein framework. The molecules transport energy with near 100% efficiency in botanical circuits designed through millions of years of evolution. A study at Boise State University, led by materials science and engineering Ph.D. student Brittany Cannon and directed by Profs. Bill Knowlton and Bernie Yurke, is attempting to build chromophore-based circuits for next-generation computing and information processing devices. However, at this early stage, the researchers are still uncovering the rules for designing such circuits, and the ability to quickly prototype a molecular circuit design is critical to research progress. To avoid the need to wait millions of year for evolution, the Boise State team developed a biomolecular nanobreadboard to enable rapid prototyping of molecular circuits. Instead of soldering components together as used in conventional circuits (too large and cannot self-assemble) or using proteins as plants do (too many complicated components), the team used DNA to create the nanobreadboards, which actually build themselves, and the circuits do too. To demonstrate the approach, the team built two AND logic gates and switched them using DNA inputs. The logic gates were imaged using the Bruker MultiMode 8 AFM in our Surface Science Laboratory, and the results were published recently in ACS Photonics. Such components may be used in future devices in which computation is performed in ultra-high efficiency and ultra-fast molecular circuits using light rather than in silicon chips using electrons.
Learn more about the research on the ACS Publications website.