Scientists are working to create nanoscale silver clusters with unique fluorescent properties, which are important for a variety of sensing applications including biomedical imaging.
In recent experiments, the researchers positioned silver clusters at programmed sites on a nanoscale breadboard, a construction base for prototyping of photonics and electronics. “Our ‘breadboard’ is a DNA nanotube with spaces programmed 7 nanometers apart,” says lead author Stacy Copp, a graduate student in the physics department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
“Due to the strong interactions between DNA and metal atoms, it’s quite challenging to design DNA breadboards that keep their desired structure when these new interactions are introduced,” says Beth Gwinn, a professor in the physics department.
