IBM researches use of DNA origami to build tiny circuit boards

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I heard about this on a podcast on the way home last night, and followed up at IBM’s website to get the skinny. According to that report the technology is about 10 years away from commercial application, but it’s still pretty cool.

IBM logoIBM researchers and collaborator Paul W.K. Rothemund, of the California Institute of Technology, have made an advancement in combining lithographic patterning with self assembly – a method to arrange DNA origami structures on surfaces compatible with today’s semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

…The utility of this approach lies in the fact that the positioned DNA nanostructures can serve as scaffolds, or miniature circuit boards, for the precise assembly of components – such as carbon nanotubes, nanowires and nanoparticles – at dimensions significantly smaller than possible with conventional semiconductor fabrication techniques. This opens up the possibility of creating functional devices that can be integrated into larger structures, as well as enabling studies of arrays of nanostructures with known coordinates.

The paper on this will be published in the September issue of Nature Nanotechnology, but you can download it here right now.

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