Green Research Group

The interaction of light and noble nanoparticles shows great promise for applications in sensing and light harvesting. In particular, gold nanostructures have recently been shown to increase the maximum power, efficiency, and stability of perovskite solar cells leading to a potential dramatic increase in the commercial viability of photovoltaic devices. However, these species are difficult to study, particularly regarding anisotropic particles, due to the inherent difficulty of producing ordered samples. To overcome this obstacle, we are focusing on the hierarchical assembly of inorganic nanomaterials facilitated by organic moiety surface modification and DNA nanostructure scaffolding. Inorganic nanostructures provide a platform to build in spatial limitations for fluorophores to interact with optically active nanoparticles in order to achieve long-range non-radiative energy transfer. These nanomaterials will be assembled by surface modification using small, protected organic molecules that can be activated for binding and by creating scaffolds that will arrange the materials into desired configurations. DNA nanostructures, DNA origami in particular, offer high levels of spatial resolution and are thus well suited for the task of alignment.