Optical Mie Scattering by DNA-Assembled Three-Dimensional Gold Nanoparticle Superlattice Crystals

Abstract

Programmable assemblies of gold nanoparticles engineered with DNA have intriguing optical properties such as Coulomb-interaction-driven strong coupling, polaritonic response in the visible range, and ultralow dispersion dielectric response in the infrared spectral range. In this work, we demonstrate the optical Mie resonances of individual microcrystals of DNA–gold nanoparticle superlattices. Broadband hyperspectral mapping of both transmission and dark-field scattering reveal a polarization-insensitive optical response with distinct spectral features in the visible and near-infrared ranges. Experimental observations are supported by numerical simulations of the microcrystals under a resonant effective medium approximation in the regime of capacitively coupled nanoparticles. The study identifies a universal characteristic optical response which is defined by a band of multipolar Mie resonances, which only weakly depend on the crystal size and light polarization. The use of gold superlattice microcrystals as scattering materials is of interest for fields such as complex nanophotonics, thermoplasmonics, photocatalysis, sensing, and nonlinear optics.