The use of bionanostructures in real-world applications will require precise control over biomolecular self-assembly and the ability to scale up production of these materials. A significant challenge is to control the formation of large, homogeneous arrays of bionanostructures on macroscopic surfaces. Previously, bionanostructure formation has been based on the spontaneous growth of heterogenic populations in bulk solution. Here, we demonstrate the self-assembly of large arrays of aromatic peptide nanotubes using vapour deposition methods. This approach allows the length and density of the nanotubes to be fine-tuned by carefully controlling the supply of the building blocks from the gas phase. Furthermore, we show that the nanotube arrays can be used to develop high-surface-area electrodes for energy storage applications, highly hydrophobic self-cleaning surfaces and microfluidic chips.

Phase transitions in organic and inorganic materials are well-studied classical phenomena, where a change in the crystal space group symmetry induces a wide variation of physical properties, permitted by the crystalline symmetry in each phase. Here we observe a conformational induced transition in bioinspired peptide nanotubes (PNTs). We found that the PNTs change their original molecular assembly from a linear peptide conformation to a cyclic one, followed by a change of the nanocrystalline structure from a noncentrosymmetric hexagonal space group to a centrosymmetric orthorhombic space group. The observed transition is irreversible and induces a profound variation in the PNTs properties, from the microscopic to the macroscopic level. In this context, we follow the unique changes in the molecular, morphological, piezoelectric, second harmonic generation, and wettability properties of the PNTs.

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.

Synthetic peptide monomers can self-assemble into PNM such as nanotubes, nanospheres, hydrogels, etc. which represent a novel class of nanomaterials. Molecular recognition processes lead to the formation of supramolecular PNM ensembles containing crystalline building blocks. Such low-dimensional highly ordered regions create a new physical situation and provide unique physical properties based on electron-hole QC phenomena. In the case of asymmetrical crystalline structure, basic physical phenomena such as linear electro-optic, piezoelectric, and nonlinear optical effects, described by tensors of the odd rank, should be explored. Some of the PNM crystalline structures permit the existence of spontaneous electrical polarization and observation of ferroelectricity. The PNM crystalline arrangement creates highly porous nanotubes when various residues are packed into structural network with specific wettability and electrochemical properties. We report in this review on a wide research of PNM intrinsic physical properties, their electronic and optical properties related to QC effect, unique SHG, piezoelectricity and ferroelectric spontaneous polarization observed in PNT due to their asymmetric structure. We also describe PNM wettability phenomenon based on their nanoporous structure and its influence on electrochemical properties in PNM. The new bottom-up large scale technology of PNT physical vapor deposition and patterning combined with found physical effects at nanoscale, developed by us, opens the avenue for emerging nanotechnology applications of PNM in novel fields of nanophotonics, nanopiezotronics and energy storage devices.

No abstract