Scientists alter attractive and repulsive forces between
DNA-linked particles to make dynamic, phase-shifting forms of nanomaterials
(May 25, 2015) Scientists
at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have just
taken a big step toward the goal of engineering dynamic nanomaterials whose
structure and associated properties can be switched on demand. In a paper
appearing in Nature Materials, they describe a way to selectively rearrange the
nanoparticles in three-dimensional arrays to produce different configurations,
or phases, from the same nano-components.
"One of the goals in nanoparticle self-assembly has
been to create structures by design," said Oleg Gang, who led the work at
Brookhaven's Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), a DOE Office of Science
User Facility. "Until now, most of the structures we've built have been
static. Now we are trying to achieve an
even more ambitious goal: making materials that can transform so we can take
advantage of properties that emerge with the particles' rearrangements."