Vibration assisted electron tunneling through nano-gaps in graphene nano-ribbons for amino-acid and peptide bond recognition

Peptide bond and amino-acid recognition by tunneling current flowing across nano-gaps of graphene nano-ribbons has been recently discussed. Theoretical predictions of the tunneling current signals were used in the elastic regime showing peculiar fingerprints. However, inelastic scattering due to vibrations is expected to play an important role. Then, the proposed strategy for peptide sequencing and amino-acid recognition is revised in the light of such inelastic scattering phenomena. Phonon and local vibrational mode assisted current tunneling is calculated by treating electron-phonon scattering in the context of the lowest order expansion of the self-consistent Born approximation. We study Gly and Ala homo-peptides as an example of very similar, small and neutral amino-acids that would be indistinguishable by means of standard techniques, such as the ionic blockade current, in real peptides. We show that all the inelastic contributions to the tunneling current are in the bias range 0 V ≤ V ≤ 0.5 V and that they can be classified, from an atomistic point of view, in terms of energy sub-ranges that they belong to. Peculiar fingerprints can be found for the typical configurations that have been recently found for peptide bond recognition by tunneling current. Vibrational modes assisted tunneling in nano-gaps of graphene nanoribbons reveal specific features allowing the recognition of amino-acids and peptide bonds with atomistic resolution.