Coordination-Induced Self-Assembly of a Dipeptide into Multifunctional Chiral Nanostructures.

Short peptides could be used as chiral motifs to self-assemble into various artificial nanostructures with supramolecular or nanoscale chirality, but their applications still need to be expanded. Here, under the mediation of metal ions, the ferrocene-diphenylalanine (Fc-FF) peptide can self-assemble into various chiral nanostructures, including right-handed helical microflowers mediated by Cu, left-handed nanofibers mediated by Ag, and right-handed nanofibers mediated by Zn and Cd. Meanwhile, the gold nanoparticles could be mineralized and deposited on Cu/Fc-FF microflowers to form AuNPs@Cu/Fc-FF, which showed significantly improved catalytic activity. The Ag could be further mineralized on the peptide nanofibers to form AgNPs@Fc-FF, showing an excellent antibacterial effect. Overall, this study provides new insights into the chiral self-assembly of short peptides and demonstrates that the chiral peptide-metal assemblies may have broad prospects in the fields of biocatalysis and antimicrobials.