The past decade has witnessed a breakthrough in the field of structural DNA nanotechnology, which utilizes DNA molecules as a construction material rather than as simple carriers of the genetic information. With the superior programmability of DNA, sub-nanometer precision in the self-assembly of various complex two- and three-dimensional nanostructures is achievable. It also allows a site-specific placement of different objects and functional groups onto the formed structures. This has enabled the assembly of highly sophisticated nanostructures for various applications. While the field of structural DNA nanotechnology has been astonishingly advancing, many nanoelectronics-relevant structures are made of inorganic materials, and DNA-based nanostructures have shown rather low conductivity. This has limited the use of DNA structures in nanoelectronics and reflected the need for a similar programmable route for the inorganic nanofabrication. A conceivable solution would use DNA nanostructures in a way that will precisely transfer the structural information of the DNA shapes into fabricated metallic nanostructures. One way to do that is to use the DNA nanostructures as templates for external material deposition onto the DNA surface. While this strategy has been effective in proving the concept of DNA-shape transfer, metallic nanostructures fabricated this way have shown some drawbacks, such as showing rough surface morphologies and lacking the required homogeneity for the fabricated metallic structures. An alternative strategy would be to design DNA mold structures that can dictate the shape of metal that is “cast” inside such a DNA container. The main topic of my thesis concerns the second strategy. To discuss this in detail, the structure and some of the important properties of DNA are introduced in section 1.1. In section 1.2 the main milestones in the development of the DNA-nontechnology field are discussed and section 1.3 focuses on previous fabrication approaches of DNA-based metallic nanostructures.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:31163 |
| Date | 14 September 2018 |
| Creators | Helmi, Seham |
| Contributors | Seidel, Ralf, Dahmann, Christian, Technische Universität Dresden |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | doc-type:doctoralThesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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