ZnS nanocrystals decorated single-walled carbon nanotube based chemiresistive label-free DNA sensor

We fabricated ZnS nanocrystals decorated single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) based chemiresistive sensor for DNA. Since the charge transfer in the hybrid nanostructures is considered to be responsible for many of their unique properties, the role of ZnS nanocrystals toward its performance in DNA sensor was delineated. It was found that the free carboxyl groups surrounding the ZnS nanocrystals allowed large loading of single strand DNA (ssDNA) probe that provided an ease of hybridization with target complementary c-ssDNA resulting in large electron transfer to SWNT. Thus it provided a significant improvement in sensitivity toward c-ssDNA as compared to bare SWNT based DNA sensor. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3529951]