DNA templated compoud semiconductor nanowire sensors

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Nanowires are simply very thin wires, but they have unusual and useful properties because of their size (1000x thinner than hair).In particular, the flow of small electric currents in a nanowire responds to the presence of chemicals, and quantum confinement allows for controllable photoluminescent properties.Many gases of relevance to industrial processes, or healthcare (compounds in breath), or environmental pollutants (oxides of nitrogen, ozone) can be sensed using nanowire-based devices.Quantum dots can be used for a number of applications, such as optical barcodes and display screens.However, a number of manufacturing and technical obstacles remain. Methods for preparing semiconductor nanowires exist, but these require elaborate equipment and high expense.Work at Newcastle University has shown that nanowires may be formed by low temperature reactions in water using DNA as a template on which to form the semiconductor as a nanowire. Until the recent advances by Touchlight Genetics, large quantities of pure, synthetic DNA were not available.The collaboration between Touchlight and Newcastle will aim to develop manufacturing techniques to exploit the novel possibilities for sensor manufacture that these advances enable.