Center for Protein Assemblies (CPA) and Lehrstuhl für Biophysik (E27), Physics Departement, Technische Universität München, D-85748, Garching, Germany.
Nat Commun. 2021 Nov 23;12(1):6811. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-27016-x.
Tuning colloidal structure formation is a powerful approach to building functional materials, as a wide range of optical and viscoelastic properties can be accessed by the choice of individual building blocks and their interactions. Precise control is achieved by DNA specificity, depletion forces, or geometric constraints and results in a variety of complex structures. Due to the lack of control and reversibility of the interactions, an autonomous oscillating system on a mesoscale without external driving was not feasible until now. Here, we show that tunable DNA reaction circuits controlling linker strand concentrations can drive the dynamic and fully reversible assembly of DNA-functionalized micron-sized particles. The versatility of this approach is demonstrated by programming colloidal interactions in sequential and spatial order to obtain an oscillatory structure formation process on a mesoscopic scale. The experimental results represent an approach for the development of active materials by using DNA reaction networks to scale up the dynamic control of colloidal self-organization.
调整胶体结构的形成是构建功能材料的一种有效方法，因为通过选择单个构建块及其相互作用，可以获得广泛的光学和粘弹性性质。通过 DNA 的特异性、耗散力或几何约束来实现精确控制，从而产生各种复杂的结构。由于相互作用缺乏控制和可逆性，直到现在，在没有外部驱动的情况下，在介观尺度上实现自主的振荡系统仍然是不可能的。在这里，我们表明，可调谐的 DNA 反应回路控制连接子链浓度可以驱动 DNA 功能化微米级粒子的动态和完全可逆组装。该方法的多功能性通过编程胶体相互作用的顺序和空间顺序来证明，以在介观尺度上获得振荡结构形成过程。实验结果代表了一种通过使用 DNA 反应网络来扩大胶体自组织的动态控制，从而开发活性材料的方法。
