Micro- and Nanoscale Component Assembly Using Biomolecular Recognition

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Many exciting applications of nanotechnology will require the integration of very small, separately fabricated components such as embedded processors, energy storage/generation units, sensors and actuators, and communications modules. Collectively, these can create tiny, complete autonomous nanosystems that can sense and respond in a distributed fashion for diverse and powerful applications in health, security, the environment, industry or consumer use. A key unmet need, however, is the ability to assemble these separate components even when their total size is micron-scale or smaller. At this scale, conventional robotic systems are impractical, and self-assembly is needed. This proposal is for a research program to develop methodologies for the self-assembly of micron-scale components using biomolecular recognition. Molecules such as complementary DNA strands or biotin with avidin combine in a highly specific manner and can act as "smart glue" to cause micron-scale chips to automatically assemble in their assigned locations from an aqueous solution. The smart glue can be applied to chip and substrate with high resolution using standard nanofabrication techniques. Recent work by our group has validated this concept of programmed biomolecular attachment, but significant effort is needed to understand the capabilities of the process to determine whether it can be viable as a manufacturing paradigm. Specific tasks will be to investigate sensitivities to process parameters, design and test different biomolecular structures, and develop techniques to improve position and orientation accuracy of assembly. This will involve both experimental and modeling techniques.