DNA-based plasmonic nanoarchitectures: from structural design to emerging applications

Plasmonic nanoarchitectures refer to the well-defined groupings of elementary metallic nanoparticle building blocks. Such nanostructures have a plethora of technical applications in diagnostics, energy-harvesting, and nanophotonic circuits, to name a few. Nevertheless, it remains challenging to construct plasmonic nanoarchitectures at will inexpensively. Bottom-up self-assembly is promising to overcome these limitations, but such methods often produce defects and low-yields. For these purposes, DNA has emerged as a powerful nanomaterial beyond its genetic function in biology to either program or template synthesis of plasmonic nanostructures, or act as a ligand to mediate large-area self-assembly. In conjunction with top-down lithography, DNA-based strategies can afford excellent control over internal and overall structures of plasmonic nanoarchitectures. In this review, we outline the representative methodologies for building various well-defined plasmonic nanoarchitectures and cover their recent exciting applications. WIREs Nanomed Nanobiotechnol 2012, 4:587604. doi: 10.1002/wnan.1184 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.