Biomolecular self-assembly based functional hybrid nanofabrication

Abstract

Molecular self-assembly is defined as ‘the spontaneous association of molecules under equilibrium conditions into stable, structurally well-defined aggregated joined by noncovalent bonds’. As a new strategy in nanofabrication, molecular self-assembly serves as an alternative paradigm for preparing functional nanostructures. There are numerous examples involving different molecular entities: organic molecules, colloidal nanospheres, block copolymer, and others. Among various self-assembling system of soft materials, the self-assembly based on biological molecules is becoming hot issues because biological molecules have various advantages in nanofabrication: they form the hierarchically ordered structures and have diverse functionalities. Besides those advantanges, biomolecular self-assembly is considered a valuable pathway for nanofabrication due to their highly specific molecular recognition ability, the diverse chemical and biological functionalities, and environmentally benign processing. This thesis is divided into two parts. Part I concerns “the fabrication of peptide nanomaterials $\It{via}$ biomolecular self-assembly strategies” and Part II is a study of “the hybrid assembly of functional nanomaterials and their applications as energy devices”. In part I, the synthesis of a variety of functional peptide nanomaterials were shown. Peptide molecules are very attractive building blocks for functional nanomaterials. In this part, peptide nanomaterials were assembled from an aromatic dipeptides consisting of two successively connected phenylalanine units, well known as a structural motif for Alzheimer plaque. Diverse of nanostructures including nanowires, nanotubes, nanoribbons, and nanospheres were fabricated with this peptide molecule. The prepared nanomaterials have flexible material properties for organic/inorganic hybridization processes. In details, (1) The nematic liquid crystalline dispersion of peptide nanowires and their alignments control with e...