DNA Moiré Lattices Enable New Self-Assembling Materials

Lattice Metamaterials

A new frontier in material sciences is the assembly of microscopic structures in lattices, complex structures with a regular, repeating pattern, often made of crossed strips or lines.

These structures often completely change the properties of a material, for example, making it much stronger, more flexible, reflecting light differently, etc.

These lattices can have different basic shapes, for example, squares, hexagonal honeycomb, kagome, etc.

Source: Research Gate

An additional possibility is to combine 2 layers of lattice materials, creating even more advanced properties going way beyond the potential of the individual layers. For example, we discussed the potential superconductive properties of a twisted bilayer made of a tungsten-selenium material.

A new similar type of material has now been invented by researchers at the University of Stuttgart, Arizona State University, and the Max Planck Institute.

They created a self-building structure using DNA molecules that could revolutionize how we control light, sound, and electrons. They published their results in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Nanotechnology¹, under the title “DNA moiré superlattices”.

Moiré Superlattices

Moiré superlattices are artificial materials created by stacking two-dimensional (2D) materials with a small twist angle or lattice mismatch.

Source: Nature Nanotechnology

This mismatch creates an additional “super pattern”, also called a moiré pattern, different from the elemental pattern of the initial 2 lattices. The interactions of light or electrons with the moiré pattern give new properties to this material.

So far, moiré patterns in material science had been constructed only at 2 radically different scales: either at the atomic scale, like for example with graphene layers (a hundred-millionth of a centimetre, or 0.1 nanometre), or at the microscopic scale (a thousandth of a meter).

Source: Nature Nanotechnology

These products are generally very complex to produce, requiring meticulous fabrication steps, such as the transfer, stacking, twisting, and alignment of sublattices.

However, there were no moiré superlattices at an intermediary scale, counted in nanometers. This is until these researchers used DNA to create one.

DNA Superlattices

DNA is a very special type of small molecule, as it has a natural tendency to self-organize into complex patterns at the nanoscale. One such structure is a DNA origami bundle, composed of interconnected DNA helices, which formed one of the building blocks used by the researchers.

Source: Nature Nanotechnology

The second building block was the 2D DNA tile sublattices, composed of single-stranded tiles (SSTs), of squares, hexagonal honeycomb, and kagome shapes. Transmission electron microscopes (TEM) were used to check the regularity and quality of the lattice structures.

Source: Nature Nanotechnology

The researchers used the DNA origami bundle as a “seed”, around which a much larger lattice could naturally self-organize. Different seeds create different type of DNA lattice, allowing for great control over the final shape.

Source: Nature Nanotechnology

When produced, many of these lattices mixed together, creating a bilayer lattice made of DNA molecules. Different production conditions, with variations of the seeds and temperature, allow for a limited control of the portion of bilayer vs monolayer lattices produced.

Source: Nature Nanotechnology

Analyzing DNA Bilayers and Trilayers

Using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), the researchers went on to analyze these bilayer nanoscopic structures.

Both monolayers measure ~39.0 nm in height and around a micrometer in width.

Source: Nature Nanotechnology

When the twisted bilayers used identical sublattices (square–square, kagome–kagome, and honeycomb–honeycomb), it resulted in a nearly complete (but not total) overlap of the two monolayers.

These were the combinations yielding the most interesting moiré patterns for bilayers, compared to the mixed patterns.

Source: Nature Nanotechnology

The researchers even managed to create trilayer patterns, with even more complex moiré patterns, which are also self-assembling.

Source: Nature Nanotechnology

This is not to say that no mixed layers did not display interesting patterns, with, for example, the square-kagome-square trilayer. It is also likely that more patterns could be created in the future with different seeds and DNA structures, as this is only the first ever-created nanoscopic moiré pattern.

Source: Nature Nanotechnology

More control over the development of these patterns can be developed further, and solutions are already being considered by the researchers. For example, the origami seed can be placed precisely on substrates, using nanofabrication methods. This way, it could be assembled in predefined locations on the chip.

Applications

Overall, this manufacturing technology of self-assembling DNA lattices and a new type of material could find application in any field requiring precise manufacturing at the nanoscale.

This is in large part because they provide an almost perfect mix of high spatial resolution, precise addressability, and programmable symmetry.

The first application of such a structure would be to use it as a scaffold at the nanoscopic scale. For example, it could have attached to it fluorescent molecules, metallic nanoparticles, or semiconductors in customized 2D and 3D architectures.

Another option could be to make the multi-layer lattices into rigid frameworks through chemical modifications.

They then could be repurposed as phononic crystals or mechanical metamaterials with tunable vibrational responses, with such systems having many potential applications in sensors and photonic computing.

Lastly, such lattices could have properties of spin-selective electron transport, as DNA is known to filter electrons according to their spin (a quantum characteristic).

“This is not about mimicking quantum materials. It’s about expanding the design space and making it possible to build new types of structured matter from the bottom up, with geometric control embedded directly into the molecules.”

Pr. Laura Na Liu – Director of the 2nd Physics Institute of Stuttgart University

Investing in DNA & Nanotech

Twist Biosciences

The company specializes in DNA synthesis, leveraging miniaturization methods from the semiconductor industry, saving time and money for researchers.

With its advanced DNA and RNA synthesis capability, Twist could quickly become a major aptamer manufacturer if the market for anti-clotting products grows.

As a “neutral” producer focused on providing the best nucleic acid sequences at the best price, it could be a manufacturing partner of choice for any pharmaceutical company looking to commercialize useful nucleic acids, like data storage or anti-clotting aptamers.

In January 2023, the company started shipping products from its recently launched second manufacturing installation. The new factory should double Twist’s production capacities.

It is also working on creating DNA-based data storage that could be used to safeguard data, independent of electronic systems. So maybe advanced data storage technologies could use DNA itself.

This miniaturization allows us to reduce the reaction volumes by a factor of 1,000,000 while increasing throughput by a factor of 1,000, enabling the synthesis of 9,600 genes on a single silicon chip at full scale.

Source: Twist Biosciences

As the company is an expert in producing DNA products for industrial use, it could greatly benefit from DNA becoming a key tool in building nanostructures for the semiconductor, chemical, and computing industry, be it on-demand DNA chemicals, DNA-based data storage, DNA lattice, etc.

Latest Twist Biosciences (TWST) Stock News and Developments

Study Referenced

^{1. Jing, X., Kroneberg, N., Peil, A. et al. DNA moiré superlattices. Nature. Nanotechnology. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-025-01976-3}