Soft-matter-induced orderings in a solid-state van der Waals heterostructure

• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-57690-0
• Publication Date: 2025-03-10T11:45:26Z
• Authors: Kai Zhao; Baojuan Dong; Yuang Wang; Xiaoxue Fan; Qi Wang; Zhiren Xiong; Jing Zhang; Jinkun He; Kaining Yang; Minru Qi; Chengbing Qin; Tongyao Zhang; Maolin Chen; Hanwen Wang; Jianqi Huang; Kai Liu; Hanwei Huang; Kenji Watanabe; Takashi Taniguchi; Yaning Wang; Xixiang Zhang; Juehan Yang; Zhenwen Huang; Yongjun Li; Zhongming Wei; Jing Zhang; Shuoxing Jiang; Zheng Vitto Han; Funan Liu
• Keywords: Soft matter; Nanoelectronics; State of matter; DNA origami

Abstract Deoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA), a type of soft matter, is often considered a promising building block to fabricate and investigate hybrid heterostructures with exotic functionalities. However, at this stage, investigations on DNA-enabled nanoelectronics have been largely limited to zero-dimensional (0D) and/or one-dimensional (1D) structures. Exploring their potential in higher dimensions, particularly in combination with hard matter solids such as van der Waals (vdW) two-dimensional (2D) materials, has proven challenging. Here, we show that 2D tessellations of DNA origami thin films, with a lateral size over 10 μm, can function as a sufficiently stiff substrate (Young’s modulus of ~4 GPa). We further demonstrate a two-dimensional soft-hard interface of matter (2D-SHIM), in which vdW layers are coupled to the 2D tessellations of DNA origami. In such 2D-SHIM, the DNA film can then serve as a superlattice due to its sub-100 nm sized pitch of the self-assemblies, which modulates the electronic states of the hybrid system. Our findings open up promising possibilities for manipulating the electronic properties in hard matter using soft matter as a super-structural tuning knob, which may find applications in next generation nanoelectronics.