While nanomaterials have shown great potential for electronic and photonic applications, it has been difficult to organize them onto surfaces for incorporation into functional devices. To address some of these challenges, we have focused on assembling nanoscale materials on surfaces with control over material location and crystallographic orientation. The first part of this talk will highlight our recent efforts in directing and patterning single-stranded DNA and DNA templates on substrates with micro- and nanoscale resolution. A number of different substrates were patterned by optical and e-beam lithography to create highly parallel arrays of meso- and macroscale DNA “origami” scaffolds. Using DNA templates encoded with multiple nanometer recognition sites, hierarchical assemblies were generated consisting of both organic and inorganic nanoscale materials. The latter half of the talk will highlight our current research efforts in developing high yielding chemistries to attach DNA to surface and biomaterials for biosensing applications and also the use of DNA to create switchable nanoparticle based probes.
This presentation was part of the Materials Today Virtual Conference: Biomaterials (19-21 November, 2013).
Speakers
Jennifer N. Cha, University of Colorado, Boulder