Protein-Based Electrical Junctions with Robust Biocompatible Carbon Electrodes Exhibit Activation-less Charge Transport down to 10 K
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The integration of functional proteins into solid-state electronic devices remains a central challenge in molecular bioelectronics due to the fragile nature of protein structures and their complex charge-transport behaviour. Here, we present a robust crosswire evaporated top-contact device based on bacteriorhodopsin (bR) single bilayers (SBL), configured as Au/Cys/bR(SBL)/eC/Au (simplified as Au/bR/eC). The evaporated carbon (eC) top electrode forms a conformal, non-invasive contact that suppresses filament formation and ensures electrical integrity across the cross-wire intersecting area (about 200 micron^2). Structural and spectroscopic analyses confirm that the solid-state bR films maintain the native absorption spectrum and have functional photocycle activity after electrode deposition, implying that their native conformation is not significantly affected. Remarkably, electron transport (ETp) through the 9 nm bR-SBL junctions is temperature-independent within 300 K - 10 K, excluding thermally activated hopping, while the length is incompatible with coherent tunneling. Under green illumination, the junctions exhibit a reversible, photo-induced current enhancement (Jgreen/Jdark = 2), ascribed to light-driven conformational changes rather than direct photoexcitation. The Au/bR/eC architecture thus establishes a thermally non-activated, conformationally mediated transport mechanism via a stable, cryo-compatible solid-state protein junction. This work provides a scalable platform for integrating light-responsive biomolecules into future bio-optoelectronic and neuromorphic devices.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".