Bionanotechnology Approach in Material Synthesis and Device Fabrication by Applying Peptide/Protein Assemblies
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Date: 04-24-2006
Start Time:
3:00pm
End Time: 4:00pm
Speaker: Hiroshi Matsui
From:
City University of New York
Location: 414 Schapiro/CEPSR
Hosted by:
Center for Integrated Science
Abstract:
Non-lithographic fabrications of devices such as electronics and sensor have been studied extensively by assembling nanometer-sized building blocks into the device configurations. While various nanocomponents have been applied as building blocks to construct nanodevices, the more reproducible methods to assemble them onto precise positions are desirable. We have been fabricating peptide-based nanotubes (antibody) and functionalizing them with various recognition components (antigen), and our strategy is to use those functionalized peptide nanotubes, which can recognize and selectively bind a well-defined region on patterned substrates, as building blocks to assemble three-dimensional nanoscale architectures at uniquely defined positions and then decorate the nanotubes with various materials such as metals and quantum dots for electronics and sensor applications. We have been functionalizing assembled nanotubes by metal and semiconductor nanocrystals for photonics, electronics, and sensor applications. Recently, we have synthesized nanotubes with certain peptide sequences that can selectively grow specific nanocrystals on nanotubes via biomineralization. By changing the peptide conformation on the nanotubes by pH, the nanocrystal size and shape were controlled. The Zn finger peptides could also affect nucleations of ZnS nanocrystals by their unfolding conformations and the resulting phases of ZnS nanocrystals were controlled to be the wurtzite structure although zinc blende is the stable structure for ZnS at room temperature. These sequence peptide-incorporated nanotubes are expected to become conductivity-tunable building blocks for nanodevices by controlling the size, the shape, and the phase of coated nanocrystals. For material synthesis, we used ring-shaped peptide assemblies as templates to produce various nanometer-sized crystals inside the cavities. These nano-rings mimic the Nature to grow crystals at room temperature, which need high temperature to grow by other synthetic methods. This approach can be applied to grow various exotic nanocrystals at room temperature, which is extremely important in industrial applications.