Abstract

In this contribution, we will show how the DNA-Origami technique [1] can be introduced for plasmonic and photonic applications. Firstly, we employ DNA-Origami as a platform where metallic nanoparticles as well as single organic fluorophores can be organized with nanometer precision in three dimensions. With these hybrid structures we initially study the nanoparticle-fluorophore interaction in terms of the distance-dependent fluorescence quenching [2] and angular dependence around the nanoparticle [3]. Based on these findings, we build highly efficient nano-antennas (figure 1) based on 80 nm gold dimers which are able to strongly focus light into the sub-wavelength region where the fluorophore is positioned and produce a fluorescence enhancement of approximately three orders of magnitude [4]. Using this highly confined excitation field we were able to perform single molecule measurements in solution at concentrations close to 1 μM [5] close to the biologically relevant range.

© 2015 IEEE