CAREER: Three-dimensional Nanoscale Device Fabrication via Molecular Programming and DNA-based Self-assembly

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This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant supports the development of a new nanofabrication approach based on self-assembly of nanoscale materials guided by DNA molecules. Nature has evolved the ability to self-assemble nanomaterials into complex three-dimensional geometries in a sustainable bottom-up way. In contrast, most human-made devices are assembled through a rational top-down process which is highly inflexible, expensive, and unsustainable. This research seeks to combine the strengths of natural biomolecular self-assembly and rational engineering by encoding molecular recognition into high-performance materials. The goal is to develop a new nanomanufacturing technology to fabricate complex nanoscale devices, without using expensive semiconductor factories and methods. The new manufacturing approach enables a diverse range of applications, from tiny sensors with unprecedented sensitivity to electronic devices that can self-evolve. The research is integrated with an educational and outreach program that introduces self-assembly concepts to students from K-12 to graduate level and trains a workforce for versatile, sustainable, affordable, and accessible future nanomanufacturing.Despite decades of development, molecular self-assembly has not yet yielded a disruptive nanoscale manufacturing approach. This is largely due to two unsolved challenges: (i) the lack of programmable complexity in achievable architectures built from diverse, high-performance nanomaterials such as quantum dots and nanowires and (ii) the lack of scalable yet precise methods for integrating these architectures with existing devices. This research aims to meet both challenges by maximizing the amount of molecular recognition encoded into nanoscale material components and macroscale devices. The solution is to place multiple unique DNA sequences onto precise locations on surfaces of nanoscale and macroscale components. For nanoscale components this is achieved by wrapping nanoparticles into DNA origami “suits” or boxes via programming nanoparticle–DNA interactions, such as metal-purine base, electrostatic forces, DNA-DNA pairing, etc. These arrays of multiple unique DNA strands serve collectively as molecular zip codes allowing nanoscale components to autonomously recognize and bind to each other. For macroscale surfaces this is achieved by patterning with conventional optical lithography and then performing DNA origami conjugation with standard amine–carboxyl chemistry or with new molecular barcoding approaches to anchor thousands of unique single-stranded DNA in precise positions. This patterned macroscale device surface provides a multitude of docking sites for the architectures self-assembled from nanoparticles yielding the final device. By studying and understanding the thermodynamics of self-assembly processes, nanoscale structures, experimental parameters, and performance of the resulting devices, this research pushes the limits of what is possible to fabricate with molecular programming.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.