DNA-assembled superconducting 3D nanoscale architectures

Abstract

Studies of nanoscale superconducting structures have revealed various physical phenomena and led to the development of a wide range of applications. Most of these studies concentrated on one- and two-dimensional structures due to the lack of approaches for creation of fully engineered three-dimensional (3D) nanostructures. Here, we present a ‘bottom-up’ method to create 3D superconducting nanostructures with prescribed multiscale organization using DNA-based self-assembly methods. We assemble 3D DNA superlattices from octahedral DNA frames with incorporated nanoparticles, through connecting frames at their vertices, which result in cubic superlattices with a 48 nm unit cell. The superconductive superlattice is formed by converting a DNA superlattice first into highly-structured 3D silica scaffold, to turn it from a soft and liquid-environment dependent macromolecular construction into a solid structure, following by its coating with superconducting niobium (Nb). Through low-temperature electrical characterization we demonstrate that this process creates 3D arrays of Josephson junctions. This approach may be utilized in development of a variety of applications such as 3D Superconducting Quantum interference Devices (SQUIDs) for measurement of the magnetic field vector, highly sensitive Superconducting Quantum Interference Filters (SQIFs), and parametric amplifiers for quantum information systems.

DNA origami single crystals with Wulff shapes

“…Moreover, unlike naturally occurring crystals, the morphologies of these artificial single crystals can be engineered by designing the binding modes of the DNA building blocks and the parameters of the unit cells via DNA nanotechnology. We foresee that these techniques could lead to the creation of a family of designable inorganic–organic single crystals, which could greatly expand the toolbox and potential applications of mesoporous inorganic materials by ‘duplicating’ the morphology of silica into other functional materials 36 , 37 .…”

Engineering Inorganic Materials with DNA Nanostructures

“… 48 According to Gang and co-workers, their approach could be used for the formation of 3D superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs), superconducting quantum interference filters (SQIFs), or parametric amplifiers for quantum information systems. 48 …”

Designer Nanomaterials through Programmable Assembly

“…[5c, 21a] Indeed, while hybridization of origami [5d] allows for the building of ordered 3D frameworks, am ultiple hybridization system based on bond specificity opens the possibility of introducing sequence-specific,colored binding at the vertices or faces of selected topologies.Recent studies have used binding specificity in al attice of DNA origami octahedra to build planar organizations of particles. [81,82] These groups used different binding specificities at different octahedra vertices,and given the permutation space of 4 n sequences at agiven n sequence length, alarge library of sequence binding "colors" is available.T hus,s uch an approach is ap romising strategy for prescribing larger scale nanomaterial systems since it allows one to introduce the desired material nano-objects and encode the connectivity between them for achieving atargeted structure.Though this binding color library is theoretically large,D NA assembly requires that binding sets not possess sequence overlaps to reduce off-target binding,and secondary structure formations must be minimized. Additionally,the spread of bond energies might present ac hallenge for optimizing an assembly pathway,a nd this aspect should be accounted for in potential designs.F urthermore,t hough vertex-vertex binding minimizes the potential for misaligned frames,f ace-face binding between nanoscale topologies must account for such possibilities.…”