Biology rides to computers’ aid
Photonic crystals are exotic materials with the ability to guide light beams through confined spaces and could be vital components of low-power computer chips that use light instead of electricity. Cost-effective ways of producing them have proved elusive, but researchers have recently been turning toward a surprising source for help: DNA molecules.In a paper that appeared Oct. 18 in the journal Nature Materials, MIT researchers, together with colleagues at the Scripps Research Institute and the University of Rochester, demonstrated that tiny particles of gold and balls of protein known as virus-like particles, both with strands of DNA attached to them, would spontaneously organize themselves into a lattice-like structure. Although the materials themselves aren’t useful for making photonic crystals, the distances between the particles are exactly those that would enable a photonic crystal to guide light in the visible spectrum.Photonic crystals are made from materials with very different refractive indices: That...