TY  - JOUR
AU  - Stiakakis, Emmanuel
AU  - Jung, Niklas
AU  - Adžić, Nataša
AU  - Balandin, Taras
AU  - Kentzinger, Emmanuel
AU  - Rücker, Ulrich
AU  - Biehl, Ralf
AU  - Dhont, Jan K. G.
AU  - Jonas, Ulrich
AU  - Likos, Christos N.
TI  - Self assembling cluster crystals from DNA based dendritic nanostructures
JO  - Nature Communications
VL  - 12
IS  - 1
SN  - 2041-1723
CY  - [London]
PB  - Nature Publishing Group UK
M1  - FZJ-2021-05129
SP  - 7167
PY  - 2021
AB  - Cluster crystals are periodic structures with lattice sites occupied by several, overlapping building blocks, featuring fluctuating site occupancy, whose expectation value depends on thermodynamic conditions. Their assembly from atomic or mesoscopic units is long-sought-after, but its experimental realization still remains elusive. Here, we show the existence of well-controlled soft matter cluster crystals. We fabricate dendritic-linear-dendritic triblock composed of a thermosensitive water-soluble polymer and nanometer-scale all-DNA dendrons of the first and second generation. Conclusive small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) evidence reveals that solutions of these triblock at sufficiently high concentrations undergo a reversible phase transition from a cluster fluid to a body-centered cubic (BCC) cluster crystal with density-independent lattice spacing, through alteration of temperature. Moreover, a rich concentration-temperature phase diagram demonstrates the emergence of various ordered nanostructures, including BCC cluster crystals, birefringent cluster crystals, as well as hexagonal phases and cluster glass-like kinetically arrested states at high densities.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C6  - 34887410
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000728562700025
DO  - DOI:10.1038/s41467-021-27412-3
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/903456
ER  -