14 DAY TRIAL // A group of investigators in the United States says that, by using strands of DNA and protein structures known as virus-like particles, it is possible to create materials that behave just like photonic crystals.
These are exotic structures that have the ability to guide light beams through very narrow and contained spaces. This makes them the obvious choice for creating electronics that can be powered by photons rather than electricity.
But, due to their highly-complex nature, photonic materials cannot be readily produced in the industry. The manufacturing process is very complicated and energy-intensive.
But a team of experts announces that producing photonic crystal-like materials is possible by using strands of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the main carrier of genetic information in all living things.
The work was led by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Scripps Research Institutem and the University of Rochester.
Details of the investigation were published in the October 18 issue of the esteemed scientific journal Nature Materials. The paper shows that gold nanoparticles were also necessary in this work.
The tiny particles and the virus-like protein balls both had DNA strands attached to them, and were then placed in a special solution.
As that happened, the DNA acted as a magnet, combining the nanoparticles and proteins together to produce a lattice-like structure that self-assembled.
The newly obtained material cannot be used in any way for manufacturing photonic crystals, but the researchers say that the distance between the particles making the stuff up is exactly that which enables a photonic crystal to guide light beams.
The study “is mostly showing that we have two incredibly different materials,” says MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research postdoctoral researcher Abigail Lytton-Jean.
“We have a soft protein that is biological in nature, and then you go to the other end of the spectrum, where you have a hard metallic sphere. And if we can do this with these two types of materials, you could do this with almost any type of material,” she adds.
Future photonic crystals could be made of metals and plastics, which are also hard and soft materials. “I think that the more exciting application is the joined co-assembly of organic and inorganic particles into a single structure,” says Orlin Velev.
He holds an appointment as the Invista Professor at the North Carolina State University (NC State) Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.