Building nanodevices with Ribonucleic Acid
Engineers active in nanotechnology use individual atoms and molecules as building blocks. Application areas abound in Information Technology, telecommunications, medicine and other fields. Partners involved in the MINT project set their sights on realising new nanostructures constructed with the aid of Ribonucleic Acid (RNA). The University of Glasgow, a member of the MINT consortium, made key measurements of electrical parameters of the self-assembled structures produced during the project (e.g. gold nanowires). Using temperature as a guide, the electrical engineers were able to confirm the existence of nanoscale electrical phenomena such as the Coulomb blockade and activated conduction. The data collected demonstrate that the RNA technique could be an inexpensive alternative to the current standard nanoscale manufacturing methods.
