Kinetic study for hopping conduction through DNA molecules

TL;DR

This paper investigates charge transport in DNA molecules, revealing a transition from conductive to insulating behavior influenced by disorder, temperature, and length, using a kinetic model based on Mott's variable-range hopping theory.

Contribution

It introduces a kinetic model for DNA charge transport that captures unique size-dependent features and the transition mechanism from conduction to insulation.

Findings

I-V characteristics show nonlinear behavior.

Charge transport depends on temperature and DNA length.

Transition from conducting to insulating states observed.

Abstract

Recent experiments indicated that disorder effect in DNA may lead to a transition of the charge transport mechanism from band resonant tunnelling to thermal activated hopping. In this letter, based on Mott's variable-range hopping theory we present a kinetic study for the charge transport properties of DNA molecules. Beyond the conventional argument in large-scale systems, our numerical study for finite-size DNA molecules reveals a number of unique features for (i) the I-V characteristics, (ii) the temperature and length dependence, and (iii) the transition from conducting to insulating behaviors.