A novel design for “nano LEGO”

参赛者：

夏秀杨-新加坡南洋理工大学

作品简介：

DNA包覆胶体提供了可寻址自组装的可能性，但在实验上仍然很难实现。我们提出了一种由链接配体介导的DNA包覆胶体系统，并发现链接配体与胶体上相应受体的结合足够牢固时，胶体间相互作用仅由不同状态链接配体的熵确定。

DNA-coated colloids offer the possibility of realising programmable self-assembly, which, in principle, can assemble almost any structure in equilibrium, but remains challenging experimentally. Here, we propose an innovative system of linker-mediated mobile DNA-coated colloids (mDNACCs) and find the entropy of DNA linkers plays a nontrivial role in the system. Particularly, when the binding between free DNA linkers in solution and the corresponding receptors on mDNACCs is strong, the linker-mediated colloidal interaction is determined by the linker entropy depending on the linker concentration.