Self-Assembly of DNA Dendrimers in the Bulk and at Interfaces

Conventional wisdom and everyday experience tell us that one cannot place two objects right on top of each other. This is as true for macroscopic objects, such as books and tables, as it is for microscopic ones, such as atoms and molecules. In-between these two extreme length scales, though, lies a mesoscopic scale of the typical macromolecules encountered in soft matter science: polymer chains or tree-like objects called dendrimers, which look like snow-flakes made of carbon. A few years ago, some very robust theoretical predictions have been made, which state that dendrimers could have, under certain conditions, their centers of mass share the same point in space and form large, macroscopic crystals made of such clusters, organized spontaneously. These crystals have been predicted to have elastic and transport properties dramatically different from common solids and to be hybrid materials sharing properties between flowing and rigid matter. In this proposal, we aim at creating these crystals for the first time in the laboratory through a close collaboration between experimentalists and theorists. Our dendrimers will be based on the most versatile and interesting polymer, namely DNA. We will be working hand-in-hand in refining theory and experiment in order to achieve the goal of creating for the first time these unusual materials with a high potential of applications in the laboratory. Additionally, we will be investigating the organization of these molecules on the interface between water and air, to explore the potential of these molecules in nanopatterning of functional surfaces.