Fabricating Nanoscale DNA Patterns with Gold Nanowires

Surface patterns of single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) consisting of nanoscale lines as thin as 40 nm were fabricated on polymer substrates for nanotechnology and bioaffinity sensing applications. Large scale arrays (with areas up to 4 cm(2)) of ssDNA "nanolines" were created on streptavidin-coated polymer (PDMS) surfaces by transferring biotinylated ssDNA from a master pattern of gold nanowires attached to a glass substrate. The gold nanowires were first formed on the glass substrate by the process of lithographically patterned nanowire electrodeposition (LPNE), and then "inked" with biotinylated ssDNA by hybridization adsorption to a thiol-modified ssDNA monolayer attached to the gold nanowires. The transferred ssDNA nanolines were capable of hybridizing with ssDNA from solution to form double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) patterns; a combination of fluorescence and atomic force microscopy (AFM) measurements were used to characterize the dsDNA nanoline arrays. To demonstrate the utility of these surfaces for biosensing, optical diffraction measurements of the hybridization adsorption of DNA-coated gold nanoparticles onto the ssDNA nanoline arrays were used to detect a specific target sequence of unlabeled ssDNA in solution.