Nanoscale growth and patterning of inorganic oxides using DNA nanostructure templates

We describe a method to form custom-shaped inorganic oxide nanostructures by using DNA nanostructure templates. We show that a DNA nanostructure can modulate the rate of chemical vapor deposition of SiO2 and TiO2 with nanometer-scale spatial resolution. The resulting oxide nanostructure inherits its shape from the DNA template. This method generates both positive-tone and negative-tone patterns on a wide range of substrates and is compatible with conventional silicon nanofabrication processes. Our result opens the door to the use of DNA nanostructures as general-purpose templates for high-resolution nanofabrication.