ABSTRACT
The Holy Grail in the field of materials science is to master the ability to construct intricate materials with absolute control over the placement of each component in order to tailor properties for a given application. Thanks to recent advances in the design of interactions between the components and their functionalization, as well as in the synthesis of nanoparticles with well-defined shapes and sizes, we are approaching to have the ability to encode, in the constituent blocks, the instructions to achieve a predetermined structure. Therefore, manufacturing nanostructures from the bottom-up by means of the self-assembly of information-rich components has received a lot of attention.
In this chapter, we review some of the most important breakthroughs made in the last decade to program the assembly of nanoscopic structures. We present techniques based on the nature of the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) bond such as DNA origami and its use as tiles that interact with high specificity, the functionalization of nanoparticles by grafting DNA strands to their surface, and the development of patchy particles with complex geometries. We discuss the importance of multi-component systems, the hierarchical self-assembly, and the use of pre-assembled seeds. Theoretical, numerical, and experimental aspects are addressed.
