Department of Electrical Engineering-Physical Electronics, Iby and Aladar Fleischman Faculty of Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel.
Phys Chem Chem Phys. 2012 May 14;14(18):6391-408. doi: 10.1039/c2cp40157f. Epub 2012 Mar 29.
The emerging "bottom-up" nanotechnology reveals a new field of bioinspired nanomaterials composed of chemically synthesized biomolecules. They are formed from elementary constituents in supramolecular structures by the use of a developed nature self-assembly mechanism. The focus of this perspective paper is on intrinsic fundamental physical properties of bioinspired peptide nanostructures and their small building units linked by weak noncovalent bonds. The observed exceptional optical properties indicate a phenomenon of quantum confinement in these supramolecular structures, which originates from nanoscale size of their elementary building blocks. The dimensionality of the confinement gives insight into intrinsic packing of peptide supramolecular nanomaterials. QC regions, revealed in bioinspired nanostructures, were found by us in amyloid fibrils formed from insulin protein. We describe ferroelectric and related properties found at the nanoscale based on original crystalline asymmetry of the nanoscale building blocks, packing these structures. In this context, we reveal a classic solid state physics phenomenon such as reconstructive phase transition observed in bioorganic peptide nanotubes. This irreversible phase transformation leads to drastic reshaping of their quantum structure from quantum dots to quantum wells, which is followed by variation of their space group symmetry from asymmetric to symmetric. We show that the supramolecular origin of these bioinspired nanomaterials provides them a unique chance to be disassembled into elementary building block peptide nanodots of 1-2 nm size possessing unique electronic, optical and ferroelectric properties. These multifunctional nanounits could lead to a new future step in nanotechnology and nanoscale advanced devices in the fields of nanophotonics, nanobiomedicine, nanobiopiezotronics, etc.
新兴的“自下而上”纳米技术揭示了一个由化学合成生物分子组成的受生物启发的纳米材料新领域。它们是通过使用已开发的自然自组装机制，由超分子结构中的基本成分形成的。本文的重点是受生物启发的肽纳米结构及其通过弱非共价键连接的小分子构建单元的固有基本物理性质。观察到的异常光学性质表明，这些超分子结构中存在量子限制现象，其起源于其基本构建块的纳米级尺寸。限制的维度深入了解了肽超分子纳米材料的内在包装。我们在由胰岛素蛋白形成的淀粉样原纤维中发现了在受生物启发的纳米结构中揭示的 QC 区域。我们描述了基于纳米级构建块的原始晶体不对称性发现的铁电和相关性质，这些构建块组装了这些结构。在这种情况下，我们揭示了经典固态物理学现象，例如在生物有机肽纳米管中观察到的重构相转变。这种不可逆的相变导致它们的量子结构从量子点到量子阱的剧烈重塑，随后它们的空间群对称性从不对称变为对称。我们表明，这些受生物启发的纳米材料的超分子起源为它们提供了一个独特的机会，可以将其分解为具有独特电子、光学和铁电性质的 1-2nm 大小的基本构建块肽纳米点。这些多功能纳米单元可能会引领纳米技术和纳米级先进设备领域的新未来，如纳米光子学、纳米生物医学、纳米生物压电电子学等。
