Novel Strategy for the Investigation on Chirality Selection of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes with DNA by Electrochemical Characterization

There is a correlation between specific bases of DNA molecules and the chirality of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), which contributes the recognition ability of DNA toward partner species of chiral SWNTs. A novel strategy of electrochemical characterization is reported here for the investigation on chirality selection of (7,6) and (6,5) SWNTs with various DNA sequences, and it is found that both DNA strand length and sequence composition significantly affected the interaction of chiral SWNTs with DNA. Then (7,6) and (6,5) SWNTs were distinguished from each other with DNA sequences chosen by electrochemical methods, which demonstrated an effective and excellent feasibility for the strategy and presented a new insight into DNA-SWNT applications. This strategy can also be applied to more chiral SWNTs and DNA sequence recognition and may serve as a prescreening method for the recognition and separation of single-chirality SWNTs, which would be a new contribution to the further development of DNA-SWNT hybrids.