Dynamic Plasmonic System That Responds to Thermal and Aptamer-Target Regulations

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel DNA origami-based chiral plasmonic nanosystem that responds to both thermal stimuli and specific molecular targets, enabling versatile control and detection of biomolecules through optical signals.

Contribution

It introduces a dual-responsive plasmonic system that integrates split aptamers for thermal and target regulation, expanding the functionality of DNA-templated plasmonic architectures.

Findings

System can be thermally tuned across a wide temperature range.

Detects specific molecules like ATP and cocaine with enhanced optical signals.

Demonstrates dual regulation of plasmonic responses by thermal and molecular stimuli.

Abstract

The DNA origami technique has empowered a new paradigm in plasmonics for manipulating light and matter at the nanoscale. This interdisciplinary field has witnessed vigorous growth, outlining a viable route to construct advanced plasmonic architectures with tailored optical properties. However, so far plasmonic systems templated by DNA origami have been restricted to respond to only single stimuli. Despite broad interest and scientific importance, thermal and aptamer-target regulations have not yet been widely utilized to reconfigure three-dimensional plasmonic architectures. In this Letter, we demonstrate a chiral plasmonic nanosystem integrated with split aptamers, which can respond to both thermal and aptamer-target regulations. We show that our dual-responsive system can be noninvasively tuned in a wide range of temperatures, readily correlating thermal control with optical signal changes. Meanwhile, our system can detect specific targets including adenosine triphosphate and cocaine molecules, which further enhance the optical response modulations and in turn influence the thermal tunability.