Non-spherical Janus microgels driven by thiolated DNA interactions

Janus poly (N-isopropylacrylamide)-co-acrylic acid/Au microgels that resemble a “snowman”, “dumbbell”, and an “abalone” were prepared by thermally evaporating a layer of Au on half of the microgel surface, followed by exposure to thiolated single-stranded DNA with complementary sequences. We hypothesize that when the complementary single-stranded DNA attached to the Au forms the more stable double strand, the Au reorganizes on the microgel surface, yielding the observed unique Janus particle structures.