Stanford scientists use DNA to assemble a transistor from graphene | Hacker News Reader

Stanford scientists use DNA to assemble a transistor from graphene

engineering.stanford.edu

82 pointsArikBe20 comments

This is a great achievement towards developing new methods of creating usable graphene, but they key word here is "usable". As the article says, not all created graphene follows the pattern required for usable transistors, and it's a process that's going to get exponentially harder to refine as you try to get closer perfection.

Until we get there, I'm tending to treat this as another graphene vaporware, since I haven't actually seen anyone use any form of graphene for building some kind of usable (and more efficient) piece of tech larger than a few microns. I truly believe graphene to be "the real next big thing", but we're not there just yet.

Here is the link to the paper: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130830/ncomms3402/full/nco...

The approach is very elegant. DNA is uniquely good at manufacturing molecules. Some of the proteins the nature can make are amazing. So if you want to assemble something on the molecular scale this is probably the way to go.

Proteins are manufactured by ribosomes, not by DNA itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosome

What you said is like saying "software is very good at welding auto parts", when in fact, it is industrial robots that can weld, but a paper printout of the control code would not be capable of welding!

Although DNA cannot be used for biomanufacturing in the way you describe, if you want a different but still interesting example of DNA being used for mechanical purposes, you could look at DNA origami:

http://cadnano.org/gallery

DNA origami takes advantage of DNA's ability to self-assemble fairly predictably into 3D shapes based on the designer specifying 1D sequences of letters, which bind to each other with certain propensities.

Strangely, they didn't use the role of DNA in manufacturing molecules. They had DNA-manipulation techiniques handy; they used them to lay out doped DNA, then essentially burn it to leave graphene sheets.

Yeah I know that. But I was thinking a few steps forward. To be able to make a bunch of cells manufacture a whole logical block and then just burn them to get the graphene.

This does indeed look awesome, but the article doesn't fully explain what it is that prevents us from scaling ordinary transistors further. If I understand correctly electrons start tunneling when transistors shrink to around 10nm (correct me if I'm wrong here) however Intel has 6nm process on their roadmap. Is Intel doing something magical to prevent tunneling or is my physics way off?

Science buzzword bingo!

Does look awesome though.

Chemically modified graphene (CMG) nanostructures with their microscale area, sensitive electrical properties, and modifiable chemical functionality are excellent candidates for biodevices at both biocellular and biomolecular scale.

I'm sorry but that was a load of horse-sh*t. Meaningless.

Perhaps you should have studied more? It definitely has meaning, and actually quite trivial at that.

I'm a MSc student in theoretical chemistry. I'm not a world-class professor, but neither an uneducated peasant. I meant what I wrote.

"Chemically modified graphene" is a tad ambiguous, but adding "nanostructure" is a pleonasm. And calling their area "microscale" is not only wrong, but misleading. Leaving the electrical properties part alone, I can only laugh at "modifiable chemical functionality". "Biodevice" is a somewhat clear concept and yes, graphene has potential applications in the field. But what does "bio" have to do in "biocellular and biomolecular scale"?

Fancy words but not much meaning.

Actually OC's sentence is a quote from this paper http://www.che.ksu.edu/~vberry/papers/Berry-NanoLetters-grap...

Ha! I still think it's jibber-jabber.

The article is from Stanford, so I don't doubt it's legitimacy.

That said, the title sounds like the most ridiculous collection of scientific buzz words. All they are missing is "big data" and it will be complete.

The best part is the picture which depicts DNA and copper being turned into graphene using fire. SCIENCE!

Yes I was about to post this! It has shadows and everything!

People are talking about making smaller chips, but what about space elevators? Since DNA in a single cell is on the order of metres, we could presumably grow this macroscopically and find out if the breaking strength is good enough for space elevators. Also the graphene doesn't look like it's in the oxidized form touted a few years back, which was weaker than ordinary carbon fibers.

...

"How is he, dr.Riviera?"

"Well, you see, it appears that your husband caught that transistor virus.. Remember the breakout on the biochip factory he last year?"

"Oh dear, will he survive?"

"Why? Yes, of course! You just feed it from a stabilized 5/12 Volt source. Buy a 120W one."

Next step: synthesize Skynet!

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