DNA‐Engineered Hydrogels with Light‐Adaptive Plasmonic Responses

Abstract Orientational control of anisotropic plasmonic nanoparticles is an attractive proposition to generate dynamic plasmonic responses. Particularly, the use of light as a stimulus to modulate the orientation is extremely useful owing to its spatiotemporal operative ability. This work showcases a light‐mediated approach to tune the orientational features of gold nanorods in DNA‐engineered hydrogel materials. The strategy relies on the use of visible‐light‐induced photothermal effects to cause deformation of the hydrogel matrix, resulting in temperature‐controlled polarization‐dependent optical responses whose anisotropy features are highly adaptive to the nature of DNA crosslinks. The visible‐light‐mediated approach showcased here can open novel avenues to create dynamic light‐responsive materials with reconfigurable plasmonic responses.