Nanoassembly: Emulating and Surpassing Nature

[TECH NEWS]

A team of Northwestern University scientists has learned how to top nature by building crystalline materials from nanoparticles and DNA, the same material that defines the genetic code for all living organisms. Using nanoparticles as “atoms” and DNA as “bonds,” the scientists have learned how to create crystals with the particles arranged in the same types of atomic lattice configurations as some found in nature, but they also have built completely new structures that have no naturally occurring mineral counterpart. The new method and design rules for making crystalline materials from nanostructures and DNA will be published Oct. 14 by the journal Science. “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.” Mirkin believes that, one day soon, software will be created that allows scientists to pick the particle and DNA pairs required to make almost any structure on demand.

 10/13/2011, Megan Fellman, Northwestern University