First-principles study of gallenene-based nanogap architecture for DNA nucleobase identification

In this study, we explore the potential of using a nanogap architecture based on gallenene, a single layer of Ga crystal, for DNA nucleobase identification via its quantum capacitance profiling and optical absorbance. This emerging technology offers several advantages, including minimum resources and time as well as cost-effectiveness. The results find that nucleobases exhibit a weak binding with gallenene resulting in a shorter resident time within the nanogap. Moreover, the degree of interaction between gallenene and nucleobases leads to modulation in the quantum capacitance of the system. On the other hand, we predict an anisotropic response in the optical absorption, indicating the potential for polarization-dependent nucleobase optical identification using the nanogap architecture. These results highlight the promising prospects of employing the gallenene-based nanogap architecture for sensing applications.