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Updated: May 10, 2026

On-Chip Crystallization and Large-Scale Serial Diffraction at Room Temperature
Published on: March 11, 2022
Quantitative analysis of molecular-level DNA crystal growth on a 2D surface
Junwye Lee1, Shogo Hamada, Si Un Hwang
1Sungkyunkwan Advanced Institute of Nanotechnology, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 440-746, Korea.
Abstract:
Crystallization is an essential process for understanding a molecule's aggregation behavior. It provides basic information on crystals, including their nucleation and growth processes. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) has become an interesting building material because of its remarkable properties for constructing various shapes of submicron-scale DNA crystals by self-assembly. The recently developed substrate-assisted growth (SAG) method produces fully covered DNA crystals on various substrates using electrostatic interactions and provides an opportunity to observe the overall crystallization process. In this study, we investigated quantitative analysis of molecular-level DNA crystallization using the SAG method. Coverage and crystal size distribution were studied by controlling the external parameters such as monomer concentration, annealing temperature, and annealing time. Rearrangement during crystallization was also discussed. We expect that our study will provide overall picture of the fabrication process of DNA crystals on the charged substrate and promote practical applications of DNA crystals in science and technology.
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