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Northwestern University

Synthesis, Patterning and Microscopy of Nanostructures

(Supported by NSF-EECS, DOE-BES, NIH-CCNE, AFOSR-MURI, ANL, Industry)

Research 3
The advances in modern materials and phenomena often rely on innovations in synthesis, functional architecture, their characterization and localized measurements. There is growing and compelling evidence that spatially and dimensionally constrained materials (see link) will undoubted play a decisive role in advancing materials research in the next decades.

Our activities in this theme scan a considerable breadth, ranging from size- & shape-specific aqueous synthesis of colloidal nanostructures, to site- & shape-specific nanopatterning, to localized property measurements. Recently, we have combined site specific nanopatterning with DNA-mediated assembly of anisotropic nanoparticles to construct metasurfaces. In this approach, gold nanoparticles are assembled into ordered arrays via DNA hybridization events onto a gold film decorated with DNA-binding regions defined using electron beam lithography. This approach enables one to systematically tune three critical architectural parameters of the metasurfaces: (1) anisotropic metal nanoparticle shape and size, (2) the distance between nanoparticles and a metal surface, and (3) the symmetry and spacing of particles. Importantly, these parameters allow for the precise control over the optical properties of metasurfaces.

We are developing innovative synthesis approaches for magnetic nanostructures and site- & shape-specific nanopatterning for fabricating intricate materials architecture on arbitrary substrates, including insulating plastics and ceramics. Moreover, we are working on establishing the assembly rules for the templated DNA-mediated nanoparticle assembly. These nanostructures are being characterized extensively using advanced microscopy, spectroscopy and analytical techniques.

Representative Publications:

  1. Wenjie Zhou, Qing‐Yuan Lin, Jarad A. Mason, Vinayak P. Dravid, Chad A. Mirkin. Design Rules for Template‐Confined DNA‐Mediated Nanoparticle Assembly. Small 14 (44) (2018).  DOI: 10.1002/smll.201802742
  2. Jingshan S. Du, Peng-Cheng Chen, Brian Meckes, Edward J. Kluender, Zhuang Xie, Vinayak P. Dravid, and Chad A. Mirkin. Windowless Observation of Evaporation-Induced Coarsening of Au-Pt Nanoparticles in Polymer Nanoreactors. Journal of the American Chemical Society, In Press (2018). DOI: 10.1021/jacs.8b03105
  3. Qing-Yuan Lin, Edgar Palacios, Wenjie Zhou, Zhongyang Li, Jarad A. Mason, Zizhuo Liu , Haixin Lin, Peng-Cheng Chen, Vinayak P. Dravid, Koray Aydin, and Chad A. Mirkin. DNA-Mediated Size-Selective Nanoparticle Assembly for Multiplexed Surface Encoding. Nano Letters, 18 (4), 2645-2649 (2018). DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.8b00509
  4. Qing-Yuan Lin, Jarad A. Mason, Zhongyang Li, Wenjie Zhou, Matthew N. O’Brien, Keith A. Brown, Matthew R. Jones, Serkan Butun, Byeongdu Lee, Vinayak P. Dravid, Koray Aydin, and Chad A. Mirkin. Building superlattices from individual nanoparticles via template-confined DNA-mediated assembly. Science, 359 (6376), 669-672 (2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaq0591
  5. Xing Liao, Yi-kai Huang, Chad A. Mirkin, and Vinayak P. Dravid, High Throughput Synthesis of Multifunctional Oxide Nanostructures within Nanoreactors Defined by Beam Pen Lithography. ACS Nano, 11 (5), 4439-4444 (2017). DOI:10.1021/acsnano.7b00124
  6. Jingshan S. Du, Peng-Cheng Chen, Brian Meckes, Zhuang Xie, Jinghan Zhu, Yuan Liu, Vinayak P. Dravid, and Chad A. Mirkin, The Structural Fate of Individual Multicomponent Metal-Oxide Nanoparticles in Polymer Nanoreactors. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 56 (26), 7625-7629 (2017). DOI: 10.1002/ange.201703296
  7. Peng-Cheng Chen, Jingshan S. Du, Brian Meckes, Liliang Huang, Zhuang Xie, James L. Hedrick, Vinayak P. Dravid, and Chad A. Mirkin, Structural Evolution of Three-Component Nanoparticles in Polymer Nanoreactors. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 139 (29), 9876-9884 (2017). DOI:10.1021/jacs.7b03163
  8. Benjamin D. Myers, Qing-Yuan Lin, Huanxin Wu, Erik Luijten, Chad A. Mirkin, and Vinayak P. Dravid, Size-Selective Nanoparticle Assembly on Substrates by DNA Density Patterning, ACS Nano, 10 (6), 5679–5686 (2016). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.6b02246
  9. Peng-Cheng Chen, Xiaolong Liu, James L. Hedrick, Zhuang Xie, Shunzhi Wang, Qing-Yuan Lin, Mark C. Hersam, Vinayak P. Dravid, and Chad A. Mirkin. Polyelemental nanoparticle libraries. Science, 352 (6293), 1565-1569 (2016). DOI:10.1126/science.aaf8402
  10. Qing-Yuan Lin, Zhongyang Li, Keith A. Brown, Matthew N. O'Brien, Michael B. Ross, Yu Zhou, Serkan Butun, Peng-Cheng Chen, George C. Schatz, Vinayak P. Dravid, Koray Aydin, and Chad A. Mirkin. Strong Coupling between Plasmonic Gap Modes and Photonic Lattice Modes in DNA-Assembled Gold Nanocube Arrays. Nano Letters, 15 (7), 4699-4703 (2015). DOI:10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b01548
  11. Peng-Cheng Chen, Guoliang Liu, Yu Zhou, Zhuang Xie, Keith A. Brown, Natalia Chernyak, James L. Hedrick, Shu He, Zhuang Xie, Qing-Yuan Lin, Vinayak P. Dravid, Stacy A. O’Neill-Slawecki, and Chad A. Mirkin. Tip-Directed Synthesis of Multimetallic Nanoparticles. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 137 (28), 9167-9173 (2015). DOI: 10.1021/jacs.5b05139

 

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