Abstract
The purpose of this review is to present a comprehensive and up-to-date
account of the main physical properties of DNA-based nanobiostructured
devices, stressing the role played by their quasi-periodicity
arrangement and correlation effects. Although the DNA-like molecule is
usually described as a short-ranged correlated random ladder, artificial
segments can be grown following quasiperiodic sequences as, for
instance, the Fibonacci and Rudin-Shapiro ones. They have interesting
properties like a complex fractal spectra of energy, which can be
considered as their indelible mark, and collective properties that are
not shared by their constituents. These collective properties are due to
the presence of long-range correlations, which are expected to be
reflected somehow in their various spectra (electronic transmission,
density of states, etc.) defining another description of disorder.
Although long-range correlations are responsible for the effective
electronic transport at specific resonant energies of finite DNA
segments, much of the anomalous spread of an initially localized
electron wave-packet can be accounted by short-range pair correlations,
suggesting that an approach based on the inclusion of further
short-range correlations on the nucleotide distribution leads to an
adequate description of the electronic properties of DNA segments. The
introduction of defects may generate states within the gap, and
substantially improves the conductance, specially of finite branches.
They usually become exponentially localized for any amount of disorder,
and have the property to tailor the electronic transport properties of
DNA-based nanoelectronic devices. In particular, symmetric and
antisymmetric correlations have quite distinct influence on the nature
of the electronic states, and a diluted distribution of defects lead to
an anomalous diffusion of the electronic wave-packet. Nonlinear
contributions, arising from the coupling between electrons and the
molecular vibrations, promote an electronic self-trapping, thus opening
up the possibility of controlling the spreading of the electronic
density by an external field. The main features of DNA-based
nanobiostructured devices presented in this review will include their
electronic density of states, energy profiles, thermodynamic properties,
localization, correlation effects, scale laws, fractal and multifractal
analysis, and anhydrous crystals of their bases, among others. New
features, like other nanobiostructured devices, as well as the future
directions in this field are also presented and discussed. (C) 2013
Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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