Chiara Busa
University of Birmingham, UK
Title: Novel bottom-up sub-micron architectures for advanced functional materials
Biography
Biography: Chiara Busa
Abstract
DNA nanotechnologies had a major development during the last two decades. Th eir real potential and versatility began to be investigated and understood with the synthesis of a polyhedron-structured DNA molecule. Due to the intrinsic properties of DNA and developments in sequence design, diff erent polyhedral, either in shape and/or dimensions were synthesised. Custom-tailored properties and high yields are characteristic of these structures. In this project, the main work was represented by the disposition, anchoring and imaging of self-annealed DNA polyhedron, with high yield and stability of the molecules. Th e last step consists in formation a gold layer on top of the pre-annealed DNA polyhedron, in order to build a specifi cally-patterned gold materials with optical responses. According to previous studies, specific strands of DNA sequence were designed, to anneal and form a geometric 3D tetrahedron, with >90% yield. Th e anchoring of the DNA structures was carried out on TEM carbon grids, where the structures where demonstrated to firmly immobilise on the surface. Hence, the gold layer deposition was carried out by electroplating, due to the conductive nature of the TEM grid employed. AFM and TEM are the predominant techniques carried out for characterizing the structures and their disposition on the substrates in each stage of this work.