Single-biomolecule circuits with carbon nanotube wiring

Because of their size and chemistry, carbon nanotubes offer a unique opportunity to couple solid-state electronics with individual proteins or other biomolecules. This talk will describe our success covalently attaching single proteins to functioning, nanotube-based electronic devices. Because the nanotubes are sensitive, one-dimensional conductors, their electrical properties are greatly altered by this attachment, even when only one or two proteins are bound. The single-molecule circuits which result allow the dynamics of molecules to be directly observed without ensemble averaging. This work is partly supported by NSF grant EF-0404057.