I think for this project, a microscope image/graphic illustration says better than a thousand words. From the above you can tell I am doing some hieratical assembly of gold nanocrystals with different shape and sizes, and I figured out to bind them together with different symmetries.
By wrapping the inorganic nanocrystals with a DNA origami sheet, we are able to imprint the molecular recognition ability of DNA origami onto inorganic particles with different shapes, sizes, and materials to form complex hybrid structures. Compared to most previous studies, our approach does not require complicated design of DNA origami or the involvement of multiple functionalized DNA strands, making the fabrication process easier and more economical. Using gold nanorods with different shapes as an example, we showed that it is feasible to synthesize multiple finite structures that are hard to achieve through traditional colloidal synthesis. The extension of this wrapping method to gold nanocrystals with different shapes and nanoparticles with other materials shows the generality of our approach and can potentially have impact on many related fields, including plasmonic sensors, medical imaging, and photovoltaics.
This work is currently in preparation, please stay tuned for more update ：)
