Issue 7, 2024

DNA nanostar structures with tunable auxetic properties

Abstract

Auxetic structures are unique with a negative Poisson's ratio. Unlike regular materials, they respond to external loading with simultaneous expansion or compression in all directions, rendering powerful properties advantageous in diverse applications from manufacturing to space engineering. The auxetic behaviors are determined by structural design and architecture. Such structures have been discovered in natural crystals and demonstrated synthetically with bulk materials. Recent development of DNA-based structures has pushed the unit cell size to the nanometer scale. DNA nanotechnology utilizes sequence complementarity between nucleotides. By combining sequence designs with programmable self-assembly, it is possible to construct complex structures with nanoscale accuracy and to perform dynamic reconfigurations. Herein, we report a novel design of auxetic nanostars with sliding behaviors using DNA origami. Our proposed structure, inspired by an Islamic pattern, demonstrates a unit cell with two distinct reconfigurations by programming directed sliding mechanisms. Compared to previous metamaterials, the DNA nanostars show an architecture with tunable auxetic properties for the first time. We envision that this strategy may form the basis of novel metastructures with adaptability and open new possibilities in bioengineering.

Graphical abstract: DNA nanostar structures with tunable auxetic properties

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
26 Dec 2023
Accepted
08 Apr 2024
First published
09 Apr 2024
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Mol. Syst. Des. Eng., 2024,9, 765-774

DNA nanostar structures with tunable auxetic properties

Y. Du, R. Li, A. S. Madhvacharyula, A. A. Swett and J. H. Choi, Mol. Syst. Des. Eng., 2024, 9, 765 DOI: 10.1039/D3ME00202K

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