Smart Nanotubes for Biotechnology and Biocatalysis

Abstract

We believe that nanotubes offer some important advantages for biotechnological applications of nanoparticles. Because of its tremendous versatility in terms of materials that can be used, sizes that can be obtained, and chemistry and biochemistry that can be applied, the template method might prove to be a particularly advantageous approach for preparing nanotubes for such applications. However, this field of nanotube biotechnology is in its infancy, and there is much work to be performed before products based on this technology are brought to the market place. For example, in our applications to date, we have incorporated the payload into the nanotubes by either covalent bonding or other chemical interactions. However, in some applications, it might be useful to simply fill the nanotube with a payload and then apply caps to the nanotube ends to keep the payload encapsulated. Furthermore, it might be useful to have these caps fall off, thus spilling the payload, when a particular chemical or biochemical signal is detected. We are currently exploring routes for preparing such capped nanotubes. The issues of cost of production and mass production of nanotubes must also be addressed.