Recent advances in DNA nanotechnology make it possible to fabricate arbitrarily-shaped 2D and 3D DNA nanostructures through controlled folding and/or hierarchical assembly of up to several thousands of unique sequenced DNA strands. Both individual DNA nanostructures and their assembly can be made with almost arbitrarily-shaped patterns at a theoretical resolution down to 2 nm. Furthermore, the deposition of DNA nanostructures on a substrate can be made with precise control of their location and orientation, making them ideal templates for bottom-up nanofabrication. However, many fabrication processes require harsh conditions, such as corrosive chemicals and high temperature. It still remains an challenge to overcome the limited stability of DNA nanostructures during the fabrication process.udThis dissertation focuses on the proof-of-principle study to convert the structural information of DNA nanostructure to various kinds of material. Specifically, Chapter 2 reports the mechanistic study of a DNA-mediated vapor-phase HF etching of SiO2. Based on the mechanistic studies, we identified conditions for high contrast (> 10 nm deep), high resolution (ca. 10 nm) pattern transfer to SiO2 from DNA nanostructures as well as individual double stranded DNA. Chapter 3 reports the use of DNA nanostructure as a template for high temperature, solid-state chemistries. By using a thin film of Al2O3, programmably-shaped carbon nanostructures can be obtained by a shape-conserving carbonization of DNA nanostructures. Chapter 4 reports a simple but robust method to obtain free-standing 3D DNA nanostructure on solid substrate by absorbing uranyl acetate onto DNA frame followed by lyophilization. Additionally, the resulting DNA nanostructure show surprisingly high mechanical strength. This is the first report on the mechanical properties of free-standing 3D DNA nanostructure.
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