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Functionalized Carbon Nanotube Electrodes for Controlled DNA Sequencing

In the last decade, solid state nanopores nanogaps have attracted significant interest in the rapid detection of DNA nucleotides. However, reducing the noise through the controlled translocating of the DNA nucleobases is a central issue for the developing nanogap nanopore based DNA sequencing to achieve single nucleobase resolution. Furthermore, the high reactivity of the graphene pores gaps exhibits clogging of the pore gap, leading to the blockage of the pores gaps, yielding sticking, and irreversible pore closure. To address the prospective of functionalization of carbon nanostructure and for accomplishing this objective, herein, we have studied the performance of functionalized closed end cap carbon nanotube CNT nanogap embedded electrodes which can improve the coupling through nonbonding electrons and may provide the possibility of N and O and H pi interaction with nucleotides, as single stranded DNA is transmigrated across. We have investigated the effect of functionalizing the closed end cap CNT6,6 electrodes with purine adenine, guanine and pyrimidine thymine, cytosine molecules. Weak hydrogen bonds formed between the probe molecule and target DNA nucleobase enhance the electronic coupling and temporarily stabilize the translocating nucleobase against the orientational fluctuations, which may reduce noise in the current signal during experimental measurements. The findings of our density functional theory and non equilibrium Greens function based study indicates that this modeled setup could allow DNA nucleotide sequencing with a better and reliable yield, giving current traces that differ by at least 1 order of current magnitude for all four target nucleotides. Thus, we feel that functionalized CNT nanogap embedded electrodes may be utilized for controlled DNA sequencing.