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Self-assembled arrays of peptide nanotubes by vapour deposition

Nature Nanotechnology volume 4, pages 849–854 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

The use of bionanostructures in real-world applications will require precise control over biomolecular self-assembly and the ability to scale up production of these materials1. A significant challenge is to control the formation of large, homogeneous arrays of bionanostructures on macroscopic surfaces2,3,4. Previously, bionanostructure formation has been based on the spontaneous growth of heterogenic populations in bulk solution1. Here, we demonstrate the self-assembly of large arrays of aromatic peptide nanotubes using vapour deposition methods. This approach allows the length and density of the nanotubes to be fine-tuned by carefully controlling the supply of the building blocks from the gas phase. Furthermore, we show that the nanotube arrays can be used to develop high-surface-area electrodes for energy storage applications, highly hydrophobic self-cleaning surfaces and microfluidic chips.

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Figure 1: Proposed assembly mechanism for the formation of vertically aligned ADNTs.
Figure 2: Vapour deposition of vertically aligned ADNTs.
Figure 3: Ultracapacitors based on ADNT-coated electrodes.
Figure 4: Highly hydrophobic surfaces and microfluidic patterning.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank E. Wachtel for help with the XRD analysis, D. Shabat and R. Perry for help with HPLC analysis, N. Fishelson for helpful discussions regarding the electrochemistry results, E. Strauss for help with ToF-SIMS analysis, R. Persky and I. Ulanovsky for help with liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) analysis, Z. Barkay for help with the SEM analysis, T. Mazor for graphical assistance, and L. Leiserowitz, Y. Feldman and members of the Gazit laboratory for helpful discussions. E.G. acknowledges the support of the DIP German-Israel Cooperation Program. L.A.A. gratefully acknowledges the support of the Colton Foundation.

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Author notes

  1. Lihi Adler-Abramovich and Daniel Aronov: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology, George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Lihi Adler-Abramovich, Shiri Stempler, Ludmila Buzhansky & Ehud Gazit

  2. Department of Physical Electronics, School of Electrical Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Daniel Aronov, Peter Beker, Maya Yevnin & Gil Rosenman

Authors
  1. Lihi Adler-Abramovich
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  2. Daniel Aronov
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  3. Peter Beker
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  4. Maya Yevnin
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  5. Shiri Stempler
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  6. Ludmila Buzhansky
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  7. Gil Rosenman
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  8. Ehud Gazit
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Contributions

L.A.A, D.A., E.G. and G.R. conceived and designed the experiments. L.A.A., D.A., P.B. and M.Y. planned and performed the experiments. L.A.A., D.A., E.G., G.R. and L.B. analysed the data. S.S. performed the energy minimization study. L.A.A., D.A., E.G. and G.R. co-wrote the paper. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Gil Rosenman or Ehud Gazit.

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Adler-Abramovich, L., Aronov, D., Beker, P. et al. Self-assembled arrays of peptide nanotubes by vapour deposition. Nature Nanotech 4, 849–854 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2009.298

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