Diamond family of nanoparticle superlattices

Abstract

Diamond lattices formed by atomic or colloidal elements exhibit remarkable functional properties. However, building such structures via self-assembly has proven to be challenging due to the low packing fraction, sensitivity to bond orientation, and local heterogeneity. We report a strategy for creating a diamond superlattice of nano-objects via self-assembly, and demonstrate its experimental realization by assembling two variant diamond lattices, one with and one without atomic analogs. Our approach relies on the association between anisotropic particles with well-defined tetravalent binding topology and isotropic particles. The constrained packing of triangular binding footprints of truncated tetrahedra on a sphere defines a unique three-dimensional lattice. Hence, the diamond self-assembly problem is solved via its mapping onto two-dimensional triangular packing on the surface of isotropic spherical particles.

Parallel Polyadenine Duplex Formation at Low pH Facilitates DNA Conjugation onto Gold Nanoparticles

“…[9][10][11][12] AuNPs have a strong inter-particle van der Waals force, and citrate-capped AuNPs are only stabilized by weak electrostatic repulsion, rendering them easily aggregated at a slightly elevated ionic strength.…”

Supramolecular Wireframe DNA Polyhedra: Assembly and Applications

“…Following this success, Gang et al further assembled a diamond-like supracrystal with gold nanoparticle-encapsulating DNA origami tetrahedra inter-connected by extra gold nanoparticles at vertex points ( Figure 5C). [71] In this case, the lowered (tetrahedral) bonding symmetry of the DNA tetrahedronencased gold nanoparticles (in contrast to commonly adopted DNA-multifunctionalized nanoparticles with a spherical symmetry) led to a diamond-like nanoparticle superlattice, which would be otherwise difficult to make.…”

The nature and implications of uniformity in the hierarchical organization of nanomaterials

“…This approach has proved particularly successful for DNA-mediated nanoparticle crystallization, where elevated temperatures are necessary to increase the rates of DNA hybridization and dehybridization to drive the system away from kinetic (disordered) states and toward thermodynamic (ordered) ones (7,48,54). Indeed, the thermodynamic control of DNA-mediated crystallization has enabled the predictable formation of colloidal crystals with >30 unique lattice symmetries, lattice parameters tuned over two orders of magnitude, and well-defined crystal habits, all built from a library of building blocks with different shapes, sizes, and compositions (7,48,54,58,78,80). For systems less responsive to temperature, dynamic interactions often occur under dilute (e.g., entropically driven assembly), weakly ionic (e.g., electrostatic-mediated assembly), or favorable solvent conditions, and interaction strength can be increased in all cases via solvent evaporation.…”