
Making material advancements at the nanoscale
In an interdisciplinary collaboration supported by CBES, researchers led by Horacio Espinosa and Chad Mirkin explored how nanoscale materials can be organized into macroscopic structures that exhibit properties that exceed those of conventional bulk materials and those exhibited by natural systems. They implemented a novel approach to design and assemble nanoscale materials using colloidal crystal engineering with DNA, which provides precise control over the arrangement of nanoparticles and enables the creation of complex lattice structures.