Self-assembly of photonic crystals by controlling the nucleation and growth of DNA-coated colloids.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Hensley A
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8740761 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:Developing construction methods of materials tailored for given applications with absolute control over building block placement poses an immense challenge. DNA-coated colloids offer the possibility of realising programmable self-assembly, which, in principle, can assemble almost any structure in equilibrium, but remains challenging experimentally. Here, we propose an innovative system of linker-mediated mobile DNA-coated colloids (mDNACCs), in which mDNACCs are bridged by the free DNA linkers in solution, whose two single-stranded DNA tails can bind with specific single-stranded DNA receptors of complementary sequence coated on colloids. We formulate a mean-field theory efficiently calculating the effective interaction between mDNACCs, where the entropy of DNA linkers plays a nontrivial role. Particularly, when the binding between free DNA linkers in solution and the corresponding receptors on mDNACCs is strong, the linker-mediated colloidal interaction is determined by the linker entropy depending on the linker concentration.
| S-EPMC7314559 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Colloidal open crystals are attractive materials, especially for their photonic applications. Self-assembly appeals as a bottom-up route for structure fabrication, but self-assembly of colloidal open crystals has proven to be elusive for their mechanical instability due to being low-coordinated. For such a bottom-up route to yield a desired colloidal open crystal, the target structure is required to be thermodynamically favored for designer building blocks and also kinetically accessible via self-assembly pathways in preference to metastable structures. Additionally, the selection of a particular polymorph poses a challenge for certain much sought-after colloidal open crystals for their applications as photonic crystals. Here, we devise hierarchical self-assembly pathways, which, starting from designer triblock patchy particles, yield in a cascade of well-separated associations first tetrahedral clusters and then tetrastack crystals. The designed pathways avoid trapping into an amorphous phase. Our analysis reveals how such a two-stage self-assembly pathway via tetrahedral clusters promotes crystallization by suppressing five- and seven-membered rings that hinder the emergence of the ordered structure. We also find that slow annealing promotes a bias toward the cubic polymorph relative to the hexagonal counterpart. Finally, we calculate the photonic band structures, showing that the cubic polymorph exhibits a complete photonic band gap for the dielectric filling fraction directly realizable from the designer triblock patchy particles. Unexpectedly, we find that the hexagonal polymorph also supports a complete photonic band gap, albeit only for an increased filling fraction, which can be realized via postassembly processing.
| S-EPMC7304928 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Dynamic self-organisation far from equilibrium is a key concept towards building autonomously acting materials. Here, we report the coupling of an antagonistic enzymatic reaction of RNA polymerisation and degradation to the aggregation of micron sized DNA coated colloids into fractal structures. A transient colloidal aggregation process is controlled by competing reactions of RNA synthesis of linker strands by a RNA polymerase and their degradation by a ribonuclease. By limiting the energy supply (NTP) of the enzymatic reactions, colloidal clusters form and subsequently disintegrate without the need of external stimuli. Here, the autonomous colloidal aggregation and disintegration can be modulated in terms of lifetime and cluster size. By restricting the enzyme activity locally, a directed spatial propagation of a colloidal aggregation and disintegration front is realised.
| S-EPMC6517385 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Three-dimensional dielectric photonic crystals have well-established enhanced light-matter interactions via high Q factors. Their plasmonic counterparts based on arrays of nanoparticles, however, have not been experimentally well explored owing to a lack of available synthetic routes for preparing them. However, such structures should facilitate these interactions based on the small mode volumes associated with plasmonic polarization. Herein we report strong light-plasmon interactions within 3D plasmonic photonic crystals that have lattice constants and nanoparticle diameters that can be independently controlled in the deep subwavelength size regime by using a DNA-programmable assembly technique. The strong coupling within such crystals is probed with backscattering spectra, and the mode splitting (0.10 and 0.24 eV) is defined based on dispersion diagrams. Numerical simulations predict that the crystal photonic modes (Fabry-Perot modes) can be enhanced by coating the crystals with a silver layer, achieving moderate Q factors (?10(2)) over the visible and near-infrared spectrum.
| S-EPMC4313827 | biostudies-other
Project description:DNA-coated colloids hold great promise for self-assembly of programmed heterogeneous microstructures, provided they not only bind when cooled below their melting temperature, but also rearrange so that aggregated particles can anneal into the structure that minimizes the free energy. Unfortunately, DNA-coated colloids generally collide and stick forming kinetically arrested random aggregates when the thickness of the DNA coating is much smaller than the particles. Here we report DNA-coated colloids that can rearrange and anneal, thus enabling the growth of large colloidal crystals from a wide range of micrometre-sized DNA-coated colloids for the first time. The kinetics of aggregation, crystallization and defect formation are followed in real time. The crystallization rate exhibits the familiar maximum for intermediate temperature quenches observed in metallic alloys, but over a temperature range smaller by two orders of magnitude, owing to the highly temperature-sensitive diffusion between aggregated DNA-coated colloids.
| S-EPMC4490366 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The reduced chain entanglement of brush polymers over their linear analogs drastically lowers the energetic barriers to reorganization. In this report, we demonstrate the rapid self-assembly of brush block copolymers to nanostructures with photonic bandgaps spanning the entire visible spectrum, from ultraviolet (UV) to near infrared (NIR). Linear relationships were observed between the peak wavelengths of reflection and polymer molecular weights. This work enables "bottom-up" fabrication of photonic crystals with application-tailored bandgaps, through synthetic control of the polymer molecular weight and the method of self-assembly. These polymers could be developed into NIR-reflective paints, to combat the "urban heat island effect" due to NIR photon thermalization.
| S-EPMC3437898 | biostudies-other
Project description:Self-assembly is one of the most promising strategies for making functional materials at the nanoscale, yet new design principles for making self-limiting architectures, rather than spatially unlimited periodic lattice structures, are needed. To address this challenge, we explore the tradeoffs between addressable assembly and self-closing assembly of a specific class of self-limiting structures: cylindrical tubules. We make triangular subunits using DNA origami that have specific, valence-limited interactions and designed binding angles, and we study their assembly into tubules that have a self-limited width that is much larger than the size of an individual subunit. In the simplest case, the tubules are assembled from a single component by geometrically programming the dihedral angles between neighboring subunits. We show that the tubules can reach many micrometers in length and that their average width can be prescribed through the dihedral angles. We find that there is a distribution in the width and the chirality of the tubules, which we rationalize by developing a model that considers the finite bending rigidity of the assembled structure as well as the mechanism of self-closure. Finally, we demonstrate that the distributions of tubules can be further sculpted by increasing the number of subunit species, thereby increasing the assembly complexity, and demonstrate that using two subunit species successfully reduces the number of available end states by half. These results help to shed light on the roles of assembly complexity and geometry in self-limited assembly and could be extended to other self-limiting architectures, such as shells, toroids, or triply periodic frameworks.
| S-EPMC9618141 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Striking morphological similarities found between superstructures of a wide variety of seemingly unrelated crystalline membrane systems hint at the existence of a common formation mechanism. Resembling systems such as multiwalled carbon nanotubes, bacterial protein shells, or peptide nanotubes, the self-assembly of SDS/?-cyclodextrin complexes leads to monodisperse multilamellar microtubes. We uncover the mechanism of this hierarchical self-assembly process by time-resolved small- and ultrasmall-angle x-ray scattering. In particular, we show that symmetric crystalline bilayers bend into hollow cylinders as a consequence of membrane line tension and an anisotropic elastic modulus. Starting from single-walled microtubes, successive nucleation of new cylinders inside preexisting ones drives an inward growth. As both the driving forces that underlie the self-assembly behavior and the resulting morphologies are common to systems of ordered membranes, we believe that this formation mechanism has a similarly general applicability.
| S-EPMC6025906 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Ultrafast dynamics in nanophotonic materials is attracting increasing attention from the perspective of exploring new physics in fundamental science and expanding functionalities in various photonic devices. In general, such dynamics is induced by external stimuli such as optical pumping or voltage application, which becomes more difficult as the optical power to be controlled becomes larger owing to the increase in the energy required for the external control. Here, we demonstrate a concept of the self-evolving photonic crystal, where the spatial profile of the photonic band is dynamically changed through carrier-photon interactions only by injecting continuous uniform current. Based on this concept, we experimentally demonstrate short-pulse generation with a high peak power of 80 W and a pulse width of <30 ps in a 1-mm-diameter GaAs-based photonic crystal. Our findings on self-evolving carrier-photon dynamics will greatly expand the potential of nanophotonic materials and will open up various scientific and industrial applications.
| S-EPMC9883472 | biostudies-literature
Project description:To minimize the incorrect use of antibiotics, there is a great need for rapid and inexpensive tests to identify the pathogens that cause an infection. The gold standard of pathogen identification is based on the recognition of DNA sequences that are unique for a given pathogen. Here, we propose and test a strategy to develop simple, fast, and highly sensitive biosensors that make use of multivalency. Our approach uses DNA-functionalized polystyrene colloids that distinguish pathogens on the basis of the frequency of selected short DNA sequences in their genome. Importantly, our method uses entire genomes and does not require nucleic acid amplification. Polystyrene colloids grafted with specially designed surface DNA probes can bind cooperatively to frequently repeated sequences along the entire genome of the target bacteria, resulting in the formation of large and easily detectable colloidal aggregates. Our detection strategy allows "mix and read" detection of the target analyte; it is robust and highly sensitive over a wide concentration range covering, in the case of our test target genome Escherichia coli bl21-de3, 10 orders of magnitude from [Formula: see text] to [Formula: see text] copies/mL. The sensitivity compares well with state-of-the-art sensing techniques and has excellent specificity against nontarget bacteria. When applied to real samples, the proposed technique shows an excellent recovery rate. Our detection strategy opens the way to developing a robust platform for pathogen detection in the fields of food safety, disease control, and environmental monitoring.
| S-EPMC10500262 | biostudies-literature