Micro- and Nanoscale Component Assembly Using Biomolecular Recognition

许多令人兴奋的纳米技术应用将需要集成非常小的、单独制造的组件，如嵌入式处理器、储能/发电单元、传感器和执行器以及通信模块。总的来说，这些可以创建微小的，完全自主的纳米系统，可以以分布式方式感知和响应，用于健康，安全，环境，工业或消费者使用的各种强大应用。然而，一个关键的未满足的需求是，即使它们的总尺寸为微米级或更小，也能够组装这些单独的组件。在这种规模下，传统的机器人系统是不切实际的，需要自组装。本提案是一个研究项目，旨在开发利用生物分子识别进行微米级组件自组装的方法。互补DNA链或生物素与亲和素等分子以高度特异性的方式结合，可以作为“智能胶”，使微米级芯片从水溶液中自动组装到指定位置。采用标准的纳米加工技术，该智能胶可用于高分辨率的芯片和基片。我们小组最近的工作已经验证了程序化生物分子附着的概念，但需要付出巨大的努力来了解该过程的能力，以确定它是否可以作为一种制造范例。具体的任务将是研究对工艺参数的敏感性，设计和测试不同的生物分子结构，并开发技术来提高装配的位置和方向精度。这将涉及实验和建模技术。

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.