DNA origami and customized self-assembly

Self-assembly offers a promising route to create nanoscale materials with unprecedented complexity and functionality. Yet progress has stalled on a fundamental materials bottleneck: existing DNA functionalization strategies coat nanoparticles with a single, uniform sequence, restricting assembly to simple periodic superlattices. Constructing complex, addressable finite architectures—essential for applications such as negative-index metamaterials, polarization sorters, and optical computing—demands a radically different approach that places multiple unique recognition sequences at defined locations on anisotropic nanocrystal surfaces. With  skills of colloidal synthesis of shape-controlled nanocrystals in hand, I moved on to their self-assembly using DNA origami as a versatile platform, aiming for the creation of sophisticated multicomponent nanostructures. I am particularly interested in the applications of my structures in the field of metamaterials, nanophotonic devices, optoelectronic architectures, and photocatalysis. Let me know if you have good idea and are interested in collaboration! 

Embedding spatial addressability onto inorganic nanocrystals for DNA-guided self-assembly  

Our solution exploits the inherent spatial addressability of DNA origami, which is fundamentally different from the DNA-origami centric approach that is currently dominating the field:  We designed flexible DNA origami sheets that conformally wrap nanocrystals of diverse shapes and materials—metallic nanorods, magnetic nanospheres, and semiconductor quantum dots—transferring a unique positional identity to every facet of the particle. With only a single DNA sequence per nanocrystal and one origami design, wrapped particles become sophisticated, orientation-aware building blocks. We demonstrate the power of this platform by assembling 36 distinct rigid and flexible finite architectures composed of up to 17 individually addressable nanocrystals, achieved in high and consistent yields. The simplicity of the chemistry removes the barrier to entry: researchers without specialized DNA nanotechnology expertise can now access custom nanoscale architectures across a wide range of materials.

Some additional thoughts: 

Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and agarose gel electrophoresis (AGE) are the two key characterizations of this project. Which involves a lot of image analysis, which I really enjoyed. I am more of a visual-oriented person that prefer analyzing the images than working on equations. This is one of the many reasons that I love this project a lot. 

Unlike my PhD works that were separated into a few projects, my postdoc research mainly focus on this single project: starting from DNA origami design and synthesis, to surface modification and functionalization of gold and other inorganic nanocrystals, followed by wrapping and organization of higher order structures. Many of these steps are new to me and not well-established in our research lab. So every single image you see takes me around a few months to figure out. This work is wrapped up and currently submitted. But I believe there are still much to learn and this system can be further optimized for specific applications. 

Last updated: May 2026