Growth and Assembly of Chip-Integrated Superlattice for Nanostructured Electronic Devices via DNA-Programmable Assembly

Self-assembly methods using DNA nanotechnology have demonstrated powerful and unique capabilities to encode nanomaterial structures through the prescribed placement of inorganic and biological nanocomponents.The challenge of selectively growing superlattices on specific locations of surfaces and their integration with conventional nanofabrication has hindered the fabrication of 3D DNA-assembled functional devices. Here we present a scalable nanofabrication technique that combines bottom-up and top-down approaches for selective growth of 3D DNA superlattices on gold micro-arrays. We further demonstrate that this approach allows for the full fabrication of self-assembled 3D nanostructured electronic devices. DNA strands are bound onto the gold arrays, which anchor the DNA origami frames and promote ordered framework growth on the specific areas of the surface, enabling precise control of the lateral placement and orientation of superlattices. DNA frameworks selectively grown on the pads are subsequently templated to nanoscale silica and tin oxide (SnO_x) that follow the framework architecture, as confirmed by structural and chemical characterizations. The fabricated SnO_x superlattices are integrated on a chip into devices that demonstrate photocurrent response.