Creating Nanoparticle Superlattices With DNA

In recent years, scientists and engineers have had considerable success building metasurfaces dotted with arrays of plasmonic nanoparticles, to create materials with sometimes exotic optical properties. Far more difficult has been taking the construction to the third dimension—assembling nanoparticle lattices built up from the surface, and including particles of multiple shapes and sizes. Now, a team from Northwestern University, USA, offers a method for building such plasmonic “superlattices”: throw a little DNA into the mix.
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