Analogical China Map Self-assembled from Single-Stranded DNA Tiles

Yanfeng Wang, Xin Ma, Mengmeng Li, Guangzhao Cui

Abstract: Single-stranded DNA tile (SST) assembly provides a simple, modular and robust framework for constructing nanostructures with prescribed shapes from short synthetic DNA strands. Here we presents a nanoscale DNA structure of analogical China map which is constructed by a number of SSTs. The constructing nanostructure is roughly 98 nm \(\times \) 67 nm in diameter with a spatial resolution of 3 nm \(\times \) 7 nm. The pattern appeared in atomic force microscopy (AFM) conforms to the pre-designed shape of Chinese map with the approximately expected dimensions, and AFM images of the field selected randomly from the mica give an 11 % assembly yield. Through this research, the capability of constructing complicated two-dimensional shapes by SST and the controllability of the internal array are fully vindicated.