DNA templated compoud semiconductor nanowire sensors

纳米线是非常细的线，但由于其尺寸(比头发细1000倍)，它们具有不同寻常和有用的特性。尤其是，纳米线中的小电流对化学物质的存在做出反应，量子限制允许可控的光致发光特性。许多与工业过程、医疗保健(呼气中的化合物)或环境污染物(氮氧化物、臭氧)相关的气体可以使用基于纳米线的设备来传感。量子点可以用于许多应用，如光学条形码和显示屏。然而，一些制造和技术障碍仍然存在。制备半导体纳米线的方法已经存在，但这些方法需要复杂的设备和昂贵的费用。纽卡斯尔大学的工作表明，纳米线可以通过在水中进行低温反应而形成，使用DNA作为模板，在其上形成半导体作为纳米线。直到Touchlight Genetics最近的进展，才能获得大量纯净的合成DNA。Touchlight和纽卡斯尔之间的合作将致力于开发制造技术，以开发这些进步实现的传感器制造的新可能性。

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.