DNA Origami Guided Helical Assembly of Gold Nanorods with Tailored Optical Chirality

Self-assembly of plasmonic nanoparticles into chiral superstructures has demonstrated chiroptical performance due to the strong electric/magnetic coupling. In particular, helical plasmonic superstructures have drawn increasing attention for exhibiting exceptionally strong chiroptical activity. Herein, taking advantage of the addressability and programmability, we designed a triangular prism DNA origami as the template to assemble gold nanorods into finite-sized helical structures with an end-to-end fashion. The rules governing the chiral assembly of nanoparticles were established, and we systematically investigated the correlation between the configurations of helical plasmonic structures and their optical chirality by finely tuning the orientation and number of gold nanorods within.