Scientists begin using DNA to form consistent nanostructures
http://www.materialstoday.com/archiv...-03/news01.htm
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DNA would appear to be the best option for guiding the assembly of the nanoparticle bricks into the desired construction. DNA strands can be attached to the nanoparticles, with sequences programmed to zip up with complementary DNA strands on a neighboring particle.
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Using a single DNA linker sequence results in a close-packed, face-centered cubic crystal structure. But using two different linker sequences that bind to each other but not themselves gives a binary system, which crystallizes in an open, body-centered cubic structure.
“We are now closer to the dream of learning, as nanoscientists, how to break everything down into fundamental building blocks and reassemble them into whatever structure we want,” says Mirkin.
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The interesting piece for me is that they have found the greatest initial success with gold. Gold, as we all know, has very special properties (primarily relative to light/EM). So it does not surprise me that it has been the most successfully tested material.
And these guys aren't the only one's working through the concept:
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Using a similar method, researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) have further investigated the interactions between complementary DNA-functionalized nanoparticles [Nykypanchuk et al., Nature (2008) 451, 549].
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