Sequence dependent charge transport through DNA molecules: The role of periodicity and long-range correlations

Understanding the intrinsic conduction properties in DNA plays a vital role in molecular electronic engineering. We use a tight-binding model to investigate the transmissivity, Lyapunov coefficient and localization length of DNA, including periodic poly(G)–poly(C), quasiperiodic Fibonacci polyGC and random sequences, as a function of sequence length and temperature. Our results show that the periodicity and long-range correlations in DNA can persist high transmittivity, and new transmission peaks can appear for whatever the sequence length or temperature increases, but the mean transmission coefficient decreases. Meanwhile, thermal enhancement of conductance is a generic feature in all these sequences and the asymptotic behaviors of localization length for random DNA are in good agreement with the mobility edge theory.