Inverse design of a pyrochlore lattice of DNA origami through model-driven experiments

Abstract

Sophisticated statistical mechanics approaches and human intuition have demonstrated the possibility to self-assemble complex lattices or finite size constructs, but have mostly only been successful in silico. The proposed strategies quite often fail in experiment due to unpredicted traps associated to kinetic slowing down (gelation, glass transition), as well as to competing ordered structures. An additional challenge that theoretical predictions face is the difficulty to encode the desired inter-particle interaction potential with the currently available library of nano- and micron-sized particles. To overcome these issues, we conjugate here SAT-assembly -- a patchy-particle interaction design algorithm based on constrained optimization solvers -- with coarse-grained simulations of DNA nanotechnology to experimentally realize trap-free self-assembly pathways. As a proof of concept we investigate the assembly of the pyrochlore (also known as tetrastack) lattice, a highly coveted 3D crystal lattice due to its promise in construction of optical metamaterials. We confirm the successful assembly with two different patchy DNA origami designs via SAXS as well as SEM visualization of the silica-coated lattice. Our approach offers a versatile modeling pipeline that starts from patchy particles designed in silico and ends with wireframe DNA origami that self-assemble into the desired structure.

main text: 8 pages, supplementary material: 53 pages

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Cited by in corpus (9)

• Assembly of Complex Colloidal Systems Using DNA
• Automating Blueprints for Colloidal Quasicrystal Assembly
• Designing 3D multicomponent self-assembling systems with signal-passing building blocks
• Multi-objective optimization for targeted self-assembly among competing polymorphs
• A one-component patchy-particle icosahedral quasicrystal
• A patchy-particle 3-dimensional octagonal quasicrystal
• Designing binary mixtures of colloidal particles with simple interactions that assemble complex crystals
• Self-assembly of chromatic patchy particles with tetrahedrally arranged patches
• Scalable Reshaping of Diamond Particles via Programmable Nanosculpting