Exploring the zone of anisotropy and broken symmetries in DNA-mediated nanoparticle crystallization
Abstract
Nanometer-sized materials (i.e., nanoparticles) can be used as building blocks to construct crystalline materials structured with high resolution. The specific arrangements that nanoparticles form can be controlled by their physical shape and size, as well as the molecules attached to their surfaces (i.e., ligands). In this work, DNA ligands are used as “bonds” whose sequence “encodes” which and how far apart nanoparticles interact with each other. Here, we study how the relative size of nanoparticles and DNA modulates the orientation and structural arrangement of nanoparticles within these crystalline materials and report the specific structural changes that occur for nanoparticles with different shapes. These results provide a roadmap to understand how to build nanoparticle-based materials with DNA.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Sep 06, 2016
- Source ID
- 10.1073/pnas.1611808113
Entities
People
- Byeongdu Lee
- Chad Mirkin
- Hai-xin Lin
- Jaime A. Millan
- Martin Girard
- Matthew N O'Brien
- Monica Olvera de la Cruz
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Argonne National Laboratory
- China Scholarship Council
- National Science Foundation
- Northwestern University
- United States Department of Energy