Photoinduced Conductivity of a Porphyrin-Gold Composite Nanowire

Negatively charged phosphine groups on the backbone of DNA are known to attract gold nanoclusters from a colloid, assembling the clusters at fixed intervals. Bridging these intervals with porphyrin-dye linkers forms an infinite conducting chain, a quantum wire whose carrier mobility can be enhanced by photoexcitation. The resulting nanoassembly can be used as a gate: a wire with a controllable conductivity. The electronic structure of the porphyrin-gold wire is studied here by density functional theory, and the conductivity of the system is determined as a function of the photoexcitation energy. Photoexcitations of the dye are found to enhance the wire conductivity by orders of magnitude.