Dudek hopes to try detecting electrical changes in simple biological molecules as soon as this summer. Blood samples from a crime scene then could be exposed to the wires, where DNA in the blood would bind to corresponding pieces on the wires, sending an electrical signal to a computer chip that could determine whether the DNA is a good match for a particular suspect. But such applications are far from reality yet because handling nanowires is not at all like handling ordinary electrical wires. She found that electrons move across the smallest OPV wires in about 20 picoseconds. This is really fast - equivalent to about 340 miles per hour.
Electricity moves through nanowires very differently from ordinary electrical wires.
The electrons in metal wire move at a constant speed as they bump each other across the wire. Cut the length of a metal wire in half and it will take half as long for electrons to pass through it. The rate of speed increases exponentially as the wires get shorter. When they tunnel, electrons bypass barriers they normally would not be able to climb without violating the law of conservation of energy. The OPV nanowire allows tunneling to occur relatively easily.