3D Functional Nanomaterials Through DNA-Programmable Assembly

Organizing functional nanoscale components into the desired material architectures can enable diverse nanotechnological applications, from engineered biomaterials to metamaterials and electronic devices. However, the conventional nanofabrication methods are limited in controlling the formation of 3D architectures and their nanoscale material composition. The talk will discuss the development of a broadly applicable self-assembly platform for fabricating designed large-scale 3D nanomaterials with targeted organization across multiple scales, from nm to mm, through DNA-programmable assembly. The recent advances in creating periodic and hierarchical organizations based on DNA frameworks inorganic nanoparticles by unifying 3D programmable self-assembly at the mesoscale and directed assembly at the macroscale will be presented. The developed assembly methods are further coupled with nanoscale templating to transform DNA-based frameworks into fully inorganic replicas from metal, metal oxide, and semiconductor materials or their combination. The formed 3D nanomaterial can be integrated with top-down fabrication methods for the creation of functional materials and devices. The application of the developed assembly approaches to enable nano-optical, electrical, and mechanical functions will be demonstrated.