Synthetic Biological Approaches for the Fabrication of Optical Metamaterials

Conventional nanofabrication techniques lack the throughput and fidelity to create large scale metamaterial structures capable of operating in the optical regime [1]. Synthetic biological approaches can create nanometer feature size [2] DNA based nanostructures with throughput in the region of over a million individual constructs, per reaction, with high fidelity [3]. We present a pathway for the design of arbitrary, via a modular DNA origami circuit/breadboard, and fabrication, of continuously metalised, 10 nanometer feature size structures by someone unfamiliar with the methodology.