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Materials chemistry

Semiconductors meet biology

Nature volume 405, pages 626–627 (2000)Cite this article

Biomolecules are some of the most underused, yet powerful and versatile, building blocks available to the materials chemist. The molecular recognition properties of proteins, protein building blocks (peptides), and single-stranded DNA are unmatched by conventional synthetic analogues. Nature does not use biomolecules to recognize technologically important inorganic materials, but through advances in molecular biology there are now strategies for designing peptides to bind selectively to metal and metal-oxide surfaces. But many questions remain about the interactions between biomolecules and unnatural inorganic materials, and how their selectivity can be improved.

On page 665 of this issue, Belcher and co-workers1 describe how they screen a combinatorial library, consisting of millions of peptides with unknown binding properties, to identify those peptides with selective affinities for various semiconductor surfaces. This approach has allowed them to select peptide sequences that can distinguish between different semiconductors, and even between specific crystalline faces of the same semiconductor.

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Figure 1: Two approaches to using biomolecules and their recognition properties for assembling non-biological inorganic materials into complex structures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and Center for Nanofabrication and Molecular Self-Assembly, Northwestern University, Evanston, 60208, Illinois, USA

    Chad A. Mirkin & T. Andrew Taton

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  1. Chad A. Mirkin
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  2. T. Andrew Taton
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Correspondence to Chad A. Mirkin.

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Mirkin, C., Taton, T. Semiconductors meet biology. Nature 405, 626–627 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35015190

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