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nanotimes News in Brief

11-10 :: October 2011

Design Rules // Design Rules will Enable Scientists to Use DNA to Build Nanomaterials with Desired Properties

I

n an interview on October 10, 2011, Northwestern University Professor Chad Mirkin was asked,

“What will be possible now that design rules will enable an expanded applicability of nanomateri- als?” Mirkin also directs Northwestern‘s Internatio- nal Institute for Nanotechnology.

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_ id=121957&org=NSF&from=news

“We are building a new periodic table of sorts,” said Professor Chad A. Mirkin, who led the research. “Using these new design rules and nanoparticles as ‘artificial atoms,’ we have developed modes of controlled crystallization that are, in many respects, more powerful than the way nature and chemists make crystalline materials from atoms. By controlling the size, shape, type and location of nanoparticles within a given lattice, we can make completely new materials and arrangements of particles, not just what nature dictates.”

Mirkin is the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and professor of medicine, chemical and biological engineering, biomedical engineering and

materials science and engineering and director of Northwestern’s International Institute for Nanotech- nology (IIN).

“Once we have a certain type of lattice,” Mirkin said, “the particles can be moved closer together or farther apart by changing the length of the interconnecting DNA, thereby providing near-infinite tunability.”

In the study, the researchers start with two solu- tions of nanoparticles coated with single-stranded DNA. They then add DNA strands that bind to these