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🧬 DNA Twist Creates New Matter!
Daily news that is actually intellectually stimulating.
Anthony Ao
July 21, 2025
DNA Strands Self‑Assemble into Programmable Moiré Superlattices, Opening a New Frontier in Nanomaterial Design
Scientists at the University of Stuttgart and the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research have devised a bottom‑up method to build moiré superlattices entirely from DNA. By encoding the twist angle, spacing and symmetry directly into a tiny “nucleation seed,” individual strands self‑organize in solution to form bilayer or trilayer lattices with unit‑cell sizes as small as 2.2 nm and patterns ranging from square to kagome and honeycomb. The hybrid DNA‑origami/single‑stranded‑tile approach bypasses the painstaking mechanical stacking used in 2‑D materials, delivers precise control over gradient twists, and produces micrometre‑scale crystals in a single step.
Takeaways
Why It Matters
The work fills the long‑standing gap between angstrom‑scale electronic moiré systems and sub‑micron photonic crystals. These DNA lattices could act as highly addressable scaffolds for quantum emitters, phononic or mechanical metamaterials, gradient‑index optics and even spin‑selective electronics, vastly expanding the design palette for next‑generation nanotechnologies.
Read the full article: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/07/250720034013.htm
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The PhDLevel Team
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