Department of Chemical Engineering, ‡Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and §Department of Physics and Astronomy, Brigham Young University , Provo, Utah 84602, United States.
Langmuir. 2017 Oct 3;33(39):10143-10152. doi: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.7b01659. Epub 2017 Sep 19.
This work examines the anisotropic electroless plating of DNA-functionalized gold nanorods attached to a DNA origami template to fabricate continuous metal structures of rectanglar, square, and T shapes. DNA origami, a versatile method for assembling a variety of 2- and 3-D nanostructures, is utilized to construct the DNA breadboard template used for this study. Staple strands on selective sites of the breadboard template are extended with an additional nucleotide sequence for the attachment of DNA-functionalized gold nanorods to the template via base pairing. The nanorod-seeded DNA templates are then introduced into an electroless gold plating solution to determine the extent to which the anisotropic growth of the nanorods is able to fill the gaps between seeds to create continuous structures. Our results show that the DNA-functionalized nanorods grow anisotropically during plating at a rate that is approximately 4 times faster in the length direction than in the width direction to effectively fill gaps of up to 11-13 nm in length. The feasibility of using this directional growth at specific sites to enable the fabrication of continuous metal nanostructures with diameters as thin as 10 nm is demonstrated and represents important progress toward the creation of devices and systems based on self-assembled biological templates.
这项工作研究了 DNA 功能化金纳米棒在 DNA 折纸模板上的各向异性无电镀，以制造具有矩形、正方形和 T 形的连续金属结构。DNA 折纸是一种用于组装各种 2D 和 3D 纳米结构的多功能方法，被用于构建用于本研究的 DNA 母板模板。在母板模板的选择性位点上的订书钉链通过碱基配对被延长了一个额外的核苷酸序列，以将 DNA 功能化的金纳米棒附着到模板上。然后将纳米棒种籽化的 DNA 模板引入无电镀金溶液中，以确定纳米棒的各向异性生长在多大程度上能够填补种子之间的间隙以形成连续结构。我们的结果表明，在电镀过程中，DNA 功能化纳米棒以大约 4 倍的速度在长度方向上进行各向异性生长，而在宽度方向上的生长速度较慢，从而有效地填充长达 11-13nm 的间隙。证明了在特定位置使用这种定向生长来制造直径低至 10nm 的连续金属纳米结构的可行性，这是朝着基于自组装生物模板的器件和系统的创建迈出的重要一步。
