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Nanoparticle self-assembly

Bonding them all

Nature Materials volume 12, pages 694–696 (2013)Cite this article

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A general approach for decorating nanoparticles with a highly dense shell of DNA linkers expands the range of building blocks that can be used for DNA-mediated nanoparticle self-assembly.

Materials that are less than 100 nm in size — at least in one of their dimensions — have properties that are either new or significantly different from the corresponding bulk forms. Diverse fabrication techniques exist for making such nanostructures with variable size, shape and composition from metallic, semiconducting, insulating or organic materials1. In great part, nanostructures have been used as building blocks for the self-assembly of complex superstructures, which themselves can also display novel properties by virtue of their symmetry and/or hierarchy, or because of the size and shape of their individual buildings blocks2. Therefore, to rationally design nanoparticle-based materials it is of fundamental interest to be able to precisely control both the spacing between the nanoparticles and the symmetry of their assemblies. This can, in principle, be achieved with DNA linkers that have complementary oligonucleotide strands, as they can be synthesized with the desired length and functionality for specific interactions. However, available methods to bind nanoparticles using DNA linkers are tailored to specific materials and conditions. Now, Mirkin and co-workers describe in Nature Materials a general approach for achieving superlattices that are self-assembled from inorganic nanoparticles in a highly controlled manner3. Because the bonding interactions in these lattices are programmed by chemically designing the constituent nanoparticles, the authors have named these nanoparticles 'programmable atom equivalents' (PAEs).

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Figure 1: Synthesis of nanoparticle-based PAEs.
Figure 2: Binary superlattices from arbitrary combinations of QD (blue), Fe3O4 (red) and Au (yellow) PAEs.

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  1. Ulrich Simon is at the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, RWTH Aachen University, Landoltweg 1, 52074 Aachen, Germany,

    Ulrich Simon

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  1. Ulrich Simon
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Correspondence to Ulrich Simon.

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Simon, U. Bonding them all. Nature Mater 12, 694–696 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3715

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