Design and Fabrication of Plasmonic Nanostructures with DNA for Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Applications

Plasmonic nanostructures display unique and strongly enhanced optical properties, therefore hold great promise for a wide range of spectroscopic applications, particularly surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). It is well acknowledged that the major contributions to SERS arise from molecules positioned in nanojunctions where the optical field is intensively concentrated due to localized surface plasmon excitations. One of the key challenges in SERS therefore lies in the design and fabrication of plasmonic nanostructures with controllable nanojunctions. In recent years, by exploiting the unparalleled base-pairing self-recognition properties, DNA-mediated assembly has emerged as a powerful and programmable tool for the accurate construction of complex and hierarchical plasmonic nanostructures with well-defined geometry and topology. In this review, we will summarize recent advances on design and fabrication of a rich variety of plasmonic nanostructures by virtue of DNA nanotechnology, and discuss their optical properties as well as applications in SERS.