Achieving regioselective materials binding using multidomain peptides
Journal: Nanoscale, Volume 14, OCT 6, page 14113–14121
Authors: Jin, Ruitao; Brljak, Nermina; Sangrigoli, Robert; Walsh, Tiffany R.; Knecht, Marc R.
Organizations: Air Force Office of Scientific Research [FA9550-18-1-0329]; LIEF Grant [LE170100200]
The ability to integrate two disparate materials-binding domains into a single ligand to achieve regiospecific binding would be powerful to direct material assembly; however, this has proven challenging to achieve due to cross-materials binding. Accomplishing this goal might be achieved by harnessing the precision of biology to exploit the recognition between peptides and specific nanomaterials. Here, a designed bifunctional molecule termed Biomolecular Exfoliant and Assembly Motifs (BEAM) is introduced, featuring two different materials-binding peptide domains, one for graphene and one for hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), at each end of the molecule, separated by a fatty acid spacer. The BEAM is demonstrated to bind strongly to both graphene and h-BN surfaces, and in each case the materials-binding peptide domain is shown to preferentially bind its target material. Critically, the two materials-binding domains exhibited limited cross-domain interaction. The BEAM design concept shows substantial potential to eventually guide self-organization of a range of materials in aqueous media.
