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Anisotropic nanoparticle complementarity in DNA-mediated co-crystallization

Nature Materials volume 14, pages 833–839 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Whether two species will co-crystallize depends on the chemical, physical and structural complementarity of the interacting components. Here, by using DNA as a surface ligand, we selectively co-crystallize mixtures of two different anisotropic nanoparticles and systematically investigate the effects of nanoparticle size and shape complementarity on the resultant crystal symmetry, microstrain, and effective ‘DNA bond’ length and strength. We then use these results to understand a more complicated system where both size and shape complementarity change, and where one nanoparticle can participate in multiple types of directional interactions. Our findings offer improved control of non-spherical nanoparticles as building blocks for the assembly of sophisticated macroscopic materials, and provide a framework to understand complementarity and directional interactions in DNA-mediated nanoparticle crystallization.

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Figure 1: The degree of size and shape complementarity between two collections of DNA-modified anisotropic nanoparticles dictate to what extent the hybridization of surface DNA ligands can drive co-crystallization.
Figure 2: Two collections of cube PAEs with complementary DNA but different edge length were co-crystallized to investigate the effect of size complementarity.
Figure 3: Two collections of cube-shaped PAEs with the same size but with concave or convex faces were functionalized with complementary DNA and co-crystallized to investigate the effects of shape complementarity.
Figure 4: The number and type of directional interactions each nanoparticle can participate in is related to nanoparticle shape.

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Acknowledgements

C.A.M. acknowledges support from the following awards: the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) FA9550-11-1-0275, the Department of Defense National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship (NSSEFF) award N00014-15-1-0043, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Materials Research Science and Engineering Center program DMR-1121262 at the Materials Research Center of Northwestern University, and the Non-equilibrium Energy Research Center (NERC)—an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the Department of Energy (DoE), Office of Science, and Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award DE-SC0000989. M.N.O. and M.R.J. are grateful to the NSF for Graduate Research Fellowships. SAXS experiments were carried out at the Dupont–Northwestern–Dow Collaborative Access Team beamline at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory, and use of the APS was supported by the DoE (DE-AC02-06CH11357). This work made use of the EPIC facility (NUANCE Center-Northwestern University), which has received support from the MRSEC programme (NSF DMR-1121262) at the Materials Research Center, and the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (EEC-0118025/003), both programmes of the National Science Foundation, the State of Illinois and Northwestern University. We thank K. A. Brown and A. J. Senesi for helpful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Rd Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA,

    Matthew N. O’Brien & Chad A. Mirkin

  2. International Institute of Nanotechnology, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Rd Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA,

    Matthew N. O’Brien, Matthew R. Jones & Chad A. Mirkin

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, 2220 Campus Dr Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA,

    Matthew R. Jones & Chad A. Mirkin

  4. X-Ray Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S Cass Ave Argonne, Illinois 60439, USA,

    Byeongdu Lee

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Contributions

M.N.O., M.R.J., B.L. and C.A.M. designed the experiments and analysed data. M.N.O. prepared samples and collected EM, ultraviolet–visible and SAXS data. B.L. wrote the theoretical model and the simulation details found in the Supplementary Information. M.N.O. and C.A.M. wrote the manuscript. B.L. and M.R.J. edited the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Byeongdu Lee or Chad A. Mirkin.

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O’Brien, M., Jones, M., Lee, B. et al. Anisotropic nanoparticle complementarity in DNA-mediated co-crystallization. Nature Mater 14, 833–839 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4293

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