DNA Origami Welding Sticks Enable Dielectrophoretic Growth of Gold Nanowires
5 affiliations
- 1Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research
- 2Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf
- 3Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
- 4University of California, Berkeley
- 5Technische Universität Dresden
Abstract
Electric fields can gather metal nanoparticles between electrodes, but turning them into continuous conductors at a chosen site remains difficult: at kilohertz frequencies free particles grow branched aggregates, and at the megahertz frequencies that favor straight wires, free DNA-coated particles were not collected at all under our conditions. Here, DNA origami tubes holding three 13 nm gold nanoparticles serve as carriers that deliver gold to the gap and then give it up to form wires. The tubes roll from a 72 × 89 nm sheet around particles bound by A20:T20 tethers and carry three particles, 25 nm apart. Three-dimensional field calculations show that at this spacing the peak field is only 1.14 times that of an isolated particle, so the scaffold creates no hot spots. At 1.2 MHz, hybrids form particle lines between Ti/Au tips where free particles leave no wire, and fronts grow from one or both tips to bridge 0.35–2.2 µm gaps. The products are polycrystalline gold with rounded grains up to about 60 nm; 13 of 17 structures conduct, with linear current–voltage curves and length-independent two-terminal resistances of 60–360 Ω. A circuit model accounts for this: after bridging, about 40 mA flows, and Joule heating melts any constriction that drops more than about 0.4 V, so growth should end when the wire is a few ohms and the leads dominate the measured value. DNA origami thus serves as a field-trappable carrier and consumable feedstock for bottom-up interconnects.
Related
- Dye-cycling DNA origami rotors for long-term tracking of transcription at base-pair resolution
- Hoberman‐Inspired Reconfigurable DNA Origami Ring for Nanoscale Capture
- Dilatable DNA origami nanopores as nuclear pore mimics
- Characterizing the structure of 3D DNA origami in a transmission electron microscope
- Hierarchical Encoding of Digital Data on DNA Origami Nanostructures with Topological Barcodes
BibTeX
@misc{rodriguezbarea2026origami,
title = {{DNA Origami Welding Sticks Enable Dielectrophoretic Growth of Gold Nanowires}},
author = {Borja Rodriguez-Barea and Yifeng Shi and René Hübner and Grigory A Tikhomirov and Artur Erbe},
howpublished = {ChemRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.26434/chemrxiv.15011189/v1},
url = {https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15011189/v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - DNA Origami Welding Sticks Enable Dielectrophoretic Growth of Gold Nanowires
AU - Borja Rodriguez-Barea
AU - Yifeng Shi
AU - René Hübner
AU - Grigory A Tikhomirov
AU - Artur Erbe
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/28
PB - ChemRxiv
DO - 10.26434/chemrxiv.15011189/v1
UR - https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15011189/v1
AB - Electric fields can gather metal nanoparticles between electrodes, but turning them into continuous conductors at a chosen site remains difficult: at kilohertz frequencies free particles grow branched aggregates, and at the megahertz frequencies that favor straight wires, free DNA-coated particles were not collected at all under our conditions. Here, DNA origami tubes holding three 13 nm gold nanoparticles serve as carriers that deliver gold to the gap and then give it up to form wires. The tubes roll from a 72 × 89 nm sheet around particles bound by A20:T20 tethers and carry three particles, 25 nm apart. Three-dimensional field calculations show that at this spacing the peak field is only 1.14 times that of an isolated particle, so the scaffold creates no hot spots. At 1.2 MHz, hybrids form particle lines between Ti/Au tips where free particles leave no wire, and fronts grow from one or both tips to bridge 0.35–2.2 µm gaps. The products are polycrystalline gold with rounded grains up to about 60 nm; 13 of 17 structures conduct, with linear current–voltage curves and length-independent two-terminal resistances of 60–360 Ω. A circuit model accounts for this: after bridging, about 40 mA flows, and Joule heating melts any constriction that drops more than about 0.4 V, so growth should end when the wire is a few ohms and the leads dominate the measured value. DNA origami thus serves as a field-trappable carrier and consumable feedstock for bottom-up interconnects.
ER -