Optical Processing of DNA-Programmed Nanoparticle Superlattices

Hierarchical structural control across multiple size regimes requires careful consideration of the complex energy- and time-scales which govern the system’s morphology at each of these different size ranges. At the nanoscale, synthetic chemistry techniques have been developed to create nanoparticles of well-controlled size and composition. At the macroscale, it is feasible to directly impose material structure via physical manipulation. However, in between these two size regimes at the mesoscale, structural control is more challenging as the physical forces that govern material assembly at larger and smaller scales begin to interfere with one another. In this work, the interplay of structure-directing forces at multiple length-scales is investigated by utilizing optical processing to influence both nanoscale and microscale features of self-assembled, DNA-grafted nanoparticle films. Optical processing is used to generate heat, which causes the self-assembled particles to rearrange from a kinetically trapped, amorphous state into a thermodynamically preferred superlattice structure. The gradient in the heat profile, however, also induces thermophoretic motion within the nanoparticle film, resulting in microscale movement at a comparable time-scale. By utilizing precise exposure times enabled by optical processing, crystallization and thermophoresis occur concurrently in the self-assembling nanoparticle system, enabling a dynamic growth mechanism whereby nucleation and growth occur in separate regions of the material. Furthermore, utilizing sufficiently short processing times allows for the formation of a fluidlike state of the DNA-functionalized nanoparticle materials that is inaccessible via typical thermal processing setups. This unique phase of the material allows for both pathway-dependent and pathway-independent growth phenomena, as appropriately tuning the experimental conditions enables the formation of morphologically equivalent nanoparticle lattices that are generated through different intermediate states (pathway-independent structures), or kinetically preprocessing a material to yield unique thermodynamic arrangements of particles once fully annealed (pathway-dependent structures).