Towards protein field-effect transistors: report and model of prototype

A protein field effect transistor (FET) exploiting the redox and self-assembly properties of the metallo-protein azurin, was reported. A working mechanism in terms of intermolecular hopping, based on the continuous reconversion of the copper-oxidized state CuII into the reduced state CuI, was proposed. The integrity of proteins in dry monolayers was investigated using intrinsic fluorescence spectroscopy. The results show that the devices switches from behaving as a n-MOSFET before resonance to a p-MOSFET after resonance. This allows exploitation of the advantages of complementary logic, fabricating p-type and n-type devices on the same chip.