Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 108, Issue 19, Pages 7679-7684Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1017343108
Keywords
size control; mineralization; structural approach; size prediction
Categories
Funding
- French Agency for Research (ANR)
- C.T. Synchrotron SOLEIL (France) [20100148]
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Supramolecular self-assembly is an attractive pathway for bottom-up synthesis of novel nanomaterials. In particular, this approach allows the spontaneous formation of structures of well-defined shapes and monodisperse characteristic sizes. Because nanotechnology mainly relies on size-dependent physical phenomena, the control of monodispersity is required, but the possibility of tuning the size is also essential. For self-assembling systems, shape, size, and monodispersity are mainly settled by the chemical structure of the building block. Attempts to change the size notably by chemical modification usually end up with the loss of self-assembly. Here, we generated a library of 17 peptides forming nanotubes of monodisperse diameter ranging from 10 to 36 nm. A structural model taking into account close contacts explains how a modification of a few angstrom of a single aromatic residue induces a fourfold increase in nanotube diameter. The application of such a strategy is demonstrated by the formation of silica nanotubes of various diameters.
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