Jang Chang-Hyun, Stevens Benjamin D, Carlier Paul R, Calter Michael A, Ducker William A
Department of Chemistry, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061-0212, USA.
J Am Chem Soc. 2002 Oct 16;124(41):12114-5. doi: 10.1021/ja017686v.
One efficient strategy for creating nanostructures on surfaces is to use the catalytic properties of a surface molecule. This strategy benefits from the amplification and chemical specificity inherent in catalysis. We describe a demonstration of the key step of such a strategy: the surface trapping of a product generated by a nanometer-scale patch of surface-bound enzyme. Nanografting was used to create a approximately 70-nm patch of carboxylic acid groups surrounded by antibiofouling oligio(ethyleneoxide) groups on the surface of a gold ball. A catalytic site was prepared by immobilization of acetylcholine esterase to the carboxylic acid patch, and a product trap was prepared by scratching a small hole in the antibiofouling surface to reveal the gold surface. Two hours after addition of acetylthiocholine, the trap was filled. This demonstrated that the enzyme had catalyzed a reaction and that the product had been used to modify the surface film.
