Nanoscale spatially and chemically resolved imaging of DNA-assembled nanomaterials

DNA-nanotechnology provides powerful capabilities for building designed nanostructures. Through nanoparticle incorporation and templating, it provides an access to desirably structured nanomaterials. However, the involved procedures require rapid nanoscale characterizations in order to be effective in creating targeted nanomaterial organizations. Tools such as transmission electron microscopy, small-angle x-ray scattering or conventional scanning electron microscopy (SEM) require significant sample preparation steps or not readily accessible for daily use. With advances in manufacturing tabletop-SEM, these instruments now operate with relevant resolution for our assembled materials. Furthermore, the ability to pair the tabletop SEM with EDS (energydispersive x-ray spectroscopy) allows for rapid assessment of synthesis parameters across the library of functional materials being developed, including photonic and electronic materials. Access to this equipment will empower our DOD (ARO) supported project to advance an engineering of nanomaterials, enabling new functionalities based on assembly via molecular methods or external light fields, and mapping structure-property relationships. A routing use of a tabletop-SEM/EDS system in our lab will reduce workflow constraints by at least an order of magnitude, allowing more efficient research in this rapidly advancing field. In the proposal we detail our characterization bottleneck to materials research and expand on the areas of our studies wherein the SEM equipment would aid or expand research endeavors. The proposal seeks establishing an approach for the fast and work-flow-integrated methodology for nanoscale spatially and chemically resolved imaging of DNA-assembled nanomaterials.