Specificity of Watson–Crick Base Pairing on a Solid Surface Studied at the Atomic Scale

Abstract

Surface Watson–Crick base pairing makes binary mixtures of the complementary nucleobases guanine (G) and cytosine (C) on Au(111) thermally stable up to the desorption temperature of the bases, whereas binary mixtures of the noncomplementary adenine (A) and cytosine segregate on heating (see STM images with DFT structures).