PITTSBURGH, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- Scientists in Pittsburgh say they have taken steps toward making three-dimensional nanosized structures, a move that could shrink modern electronic devices.
The Carnegie Mellon University researchers said they work on peptide nucleic acid formation could reduce devices by thousands of times.
"DNA nanotechnology has led to the construction of sophisticated three-dimensional nano-architectures composed exclusively from nucleic acid strands," said Catalina Achim, assistant chemistry professor at the Mellon College of Science. "These structures can acquire a completely new set of magnetic and electrical properties if metal ions are incorporated in the nucleic acids at specific locations because the metal ions have unpaired electrons.
"Our goal is to harness the information storage ability of metal-containing PNAs to build molecular-scale devices -- tiny replicas of today's electronic circuit components, such as wires, diodes and transistors."
The research results will appear in the Oct. 26 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
