Density functional study on the binding properties of nucleobases to stanane nanosheet

Highlights: • The stanane nanosheets exhibit semiconducting behavior. • The modulation in the energy band gap of stanane sheets are observed upon adsorption of nucleobases. • The adsorption of cytosine is found to be significant than other nucleobases. • The transfer of charge takes place between nucleobases and stanane sheets upon adsorption. • The findings suggest that stanane nanosheet can be used for the detection of nucleobases. We report the interaction of stanane nanosheet (Sn-NS) with deoxy ribo nucleic acids (DNA)/ribo nucleic acids (RNA) utilizing density functional theory (DFT) technique. The calculated formation energy led us to conclude that Sn-NS exhibits a stable geometric structure. The energy band structure and density of states (DOS) spectrum provide the electronic characteristics of Sn-NS, and the band gap is found to be 1.73 eV, which exhibit semiconducting property. Our results confirmed the adsorption of nucleobases with stanane nanosheet, which follows the sequence C > U > A > T > G. The interaction property of nucleobases on Sn-NS material is authenticated with the Bader charge transfer, energy gap, adsorption energy and average energy gap changes. Moreover, the interaction of nucleobases on Sn-NS is also explored using the change in the DOS-spectrum, electron density diagrams and energy band structure. The findings of the current work infer that the DNA sequencing can be carried out using stanane nanosheet.