Progress and perspective on chiral plasmonic nanostructures enabled by DNA programming methodology

Abstract

Chirality, a fascinating property ubiquitous in nature, plays an important role in living organisms. DNA-programmed self-assembly has been extensively applied to precisely organize metal nanoparticles and/or small molecules in a chiral fashion at the nanometer scale. These assemblies exhibit significant chiroptical activities and are potential in biological detection and imaging, information processing, optical metamaterials, etc. In this review, we conclude on the DNA-enabled chiral plasmonic systems, uniquely from the perspective of the evolution of DNA programming methodology. We start by introducing a variety of natural and artificial DNA nanostructures to illustrate the fine programmability of DNA. Then we discuss the broad library of DNA-programmed chiral plasmonic nanostructures, spanning from individual nanoparticle–molecule chiral hybrids to the hierarchical chiral arrangements of nanoparticles enabled by DNA nanostructures of different complexities, which are from the primary DNA double helix to advanced architectures. Some cutting-edge applications of DNA-programmed chiral plasmonic nanostructures will also be introduced. We conclude this review with our personal perspectives on the future challenges and opportunities in this rapidly developing field. We expect this comprehensive review will inspire future studies in chiral materials at the convergence of DNA nanotechnology and chiral plasmonics.