Biological assembly of nanophotonic materials

ANYL 304

David S. Ginger Jr., ginger@chem.washington.edu, Department of Chemistry, University of Washington, Box 351700, Seattle, WA 98195-1700
Biological systems excel at the synthesis, binding and assembly of nanoscale structures. This talk will describe our efforts to capitalize on these advantages by adapting biological materials (both proteins and DNA) for applications in nanophotonics. We position chromophores at precise distances from plasmon resonant metal nanostructures using biological self-assembly with DNA linkers, and use biomolecules to template the assembly of surface-bound nanostructures. Using this approach, we demonstrate that properly designed assemblies can exhibit significantly enhanced fluorescence. We characterize the optical properties of individual biologically-assembled fluorophore/metal clusters using single-particle darkfield scattering, single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy, and single-molecule fluorescence lifetime measurements to quantify the effects of distance and spectral overlap.