One-step large-scale deposition of salt-free DNA origami nanostructures

DNA origami nanostructures have tremendous potential to serve as versatile platforms in self-assembly -based nanofabrication and in highly parallel nanoscale patterning. However, uniform deposition and reliable anchoring of DNA nanostructures often requires specific conditions, such as pre-treatment of the chosen substrate or a fine-tuned salt concentration for the deposition buffer. In addition, currently available deposition techniques are suitable merely for small scales. In this article, we exploit a spray-coating technique in order to resolve the aforementioned issues in the deposition of different 2D and 3D DNA origami nanostructures. We show that purified DNA origamis can be controllably deposited on silicon and glass substrates by the proposed method. The results are verified using either atomic force microscopy or fluorescence microscopy depending on the shape of the DNA origami. DNA origamis are successfully deposited onto untreated substrates with surface coverage of about 4 objects/mm(2). Further, the DNA nanostructures maintain their shape even if the salt residues are removed from the DNA origami fabrication buffer after the folding procedure. We believe that the presented one-step spray-coating method will find use in various fields of material sciences, especially in the development of DNA biochips and in the fabrication of metamaterials and plasmonic devices through DNA metallisation.