Controlled synthesis of highly-branched plasmonic gold nanoparticles through peptoid engineering

13 June

In nature, specific biomolecules interacting with mineral precursors are responsible for the precise production of nanostructured inorganic materials that exhibit complex morphologies and superior performance. Despite advances in developing biomimetic approaches, the design rules for creating sequence-defined molecules that lead to the synthesis of inorganic nanomaterials with predictable complex morphologies are unknown. Herein we report the design of sequence-defined peptoids for controlled synthesis of highly branched plasmonic gold particles. By engineering peptoid sequences and investigating the resulting particle formation mechanisms, we develop a rule of thumb for designing peptoids that predictively enabled the morphological evolution from spherical to coral-shaped nanoparticles. Through a combination of hyperspectral UV-Vis extinction microscopy and three-photon photoemission electron microscopy, we demonstrate that the individual coral-shaped gold nanoparticles exhibit a plasmonic enhancement as high as 105-fold. This research significantly advances our ultimate vision of predictive bio-inspired materials synthesis using sequence-defined synthetic molecules that mimic proteins and peptides.

Source: nature communications
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04789-2

What's On

April

S M T W T F S
 
 
 
1
 
2
 
3
 
4
 
5
 
6
 
7
 
8
 
9
 
10
 
11
 
12
 
13
 
14
 
15
 
16
 
17
 
18
 
19
 
20
 
21
 
22
 
23
 
24
 
25
 
26
 
27
 
28
 
29
 
30
 
 
 

veski fellows in the news

Feb 2020 | Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre

Prof Mark Dawson - Australia-First Winner of Global Haematology Award

Jan 2020 | Nature MucosalImmunology

#1 most read paper of 2019 - Prof Ben Marsland's Nature MucosalImmunology publication.

 

“The real benefit of increasing fabrication rates is the transition from prototyping, making one offs, to actually going into production.”

Assoc Prof Timothy Scott

Tweets from @veskiorg