A MOLECULAR PHOTOIONIC AND GATE BASED ON FLUORESCENT SIGNALING

MOLECULES at perform logic operations are prerequisites for molecular information processing and computation1-11. We12,13 and others14-16 ha ve previously reported receptor molecules that can be considered to pe rform simple logic operations by coupling ionic bonding or more comple x molecular-recognition processes with photonic (fluorescence) signals : in these systems, chemical binding (the 'input') results in a change in fluorescence intensity (the 'output') from the receptor. Here we d escribe a receptor (molecule (1) in Fig. 1) that operates as a logic d evice with two input channels: the fluorescence signal depends on whet her the molecule binds hydrogen ions, sodium ions or both. The input/o utput characteristics of this molecular device correspond to those of an AND gate.