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Nanotechnology

Diamonds are for tethers

Nature volume 454, pages 708–709 (2008)Cite this article

Modified diamond nanowires produce an electrical response on binding to DNA. This gem of a discovery could pave the way to robust biosensors that use electrical signals to detect molecules.

Diamonds may well be a girl's best friend. But some people prefer to sing the praises of their extreme chemical stability, mechanical robustness and tunable electronic properties. The last of these characteristics has led to impressive advances in the use of diamonds for sensing applications. Reporting in Angewandte Chemie, Yang et al.1 describe a method for making biosensors from diamond nanowires. Their devices produce an electrical signal on binding to DNA molecules, and are so sensitive that they can detect vanishingly small amounts of the target molecules (picomolar concentrations).

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Figure 1: DNA sensing on diamond nanowires.

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  1. Robert J. Hamers is in the Department of Chemistry, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1101 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA. rjhamers@wisc.edu,

    Robert J. Hamers

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  1. Robert J. Hamers
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Hamers, R. Diamonds are for tethers. Nature 454, 708–709 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/454708a

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