Related papers: Economical and versatile subunit design principles…
DNA based nanostructures built on a long single stranded DNA scaffold, known as DNA origamis, offer the possibility to organize various molecules at the nanometer scale in one pot experiments. The folding of the scaffold is guaranteed by…
Flexibility governs the many properties of materials and is crucial for the function of proteins and biopolymers. However, how the self-assembly of flexibly bonded particles can lead to larger structures with global reconfigurability is…
To study the elastic properties of rod-like DNA nanostructures, we perform long simulations of these structure using the oxDNA coarse-grained model. By analysing the fluctuations in these trajectories we obtain estimates of the bend and…
Fabrication of DNA nanostructures primarily follows two fundamental rules. First, DNA oligonucleotides mutually combine by Watson-Crick base pairing rules between complementary base sequences. Second, the geometrical compatibility of the…
Bond-orientational order in DNA-assembled nanoparticle lattices is explored with the help of recently introduced Symmetry-specific Bond Order Parameters (SymBOPs). This approach provides a more sensitive analysis of local order than…
In order to optimize a self-assembly reaction, it is essential to understand the factors that govern its pathway. Here, we examine the influence of nucleation pathways in a model system for addressable, multicomponent self-assembly based on…
In contrast to most self-assembling synthetic materials, which undergo unbounded growth, many biological self-assembly processes are self-limited. That is, the assembled structures have one or more finite dimensions that are much larger…
While DNA origami is a powerful bottom-up fabrication technique, the physical and chemical stability of DNA nanostructures is generally limited to aqueous buffer conditions. Wet chemical silicification can stabilise these structures but…
Origami designs offer extreme reconfigurability due to hinge rotation and facet deformation. This can be exploited to make lightweight metamaterials with controlled deployability and tunable properties. Here, we create a family of…
In analogy with classic rigidity problems of networks and frames, the elastic properties of hydrogels made of DNA nanostars (DNAns) are expected to strongly depend on the precise geometry of their building blocks. However, it is currently…
Self-assembly is the autonomous organization of components into patterns or structures: an essential ingredient of biology and a desired route to complex organization. At equilibrium, the structure is encoded through specific interactions,…
An optimal control strategy is developed to construct nanostructures of desired geometry along line segments by means of directed self-assembly of charged particles. Such a control strategy determines the electric potentials of a set of…
Geometric frustration offers a pathway to soft matter self-assembly with controllable finite sizes. While the understanding of frustration in soft matter assembly derives almost exclusively from continuum elastic descriptions, a current…
Self-assembly in natural and synthetic molecular systems can create complex aggregates or materials whose properties and functionality rises from their internal structure and molecular arrangement. The key microscopic features that control…
Elastic sheets with macroscopic dimensions are easy to deform by bending and stretching. Yet shaping nanometric sheets by mechanical manipulation is hard. Here we show that nanoparticle self-assembly could be used to this end. We…
Self-assembly is a fundamental concept in biology and of significant interest to nanotechnology. Significant progress has been made in characterizing and controlling the properties of the resulting structures, both experimentally and…
We report Monte Carlo simulations of a simple off-lattice patchy-particle model for DNA `bricks'. We relate the parameters that characterise this model with the binding free energy of pairs of single-stranded DNA molecules. We verify that…
Soft deployable structures - unlike conventional piecewise rigid deployables based on hinges and springs - can assume intricate 3-D shapes, thereby enabling transformative technologies in soft robotics, shape-morphing architecture, and…
We introduce a new DNA tile self-assembly model: the Surface Flexible Tile Assembly Model (SFTAM), where 2D tiles are placed on host 3D surfaces made of axis-parallel unit cubes glued together by their faces, called polycubes. The bonds are…
The synthesis of complex materials through the self-assembly of particles at the nanoscale provides opportunities for the realization of novel material properties. However, the inverse design process to create experimentally feasible…