Predictive synthesis of bio-inspired materials is desired for engineering proteins and other highly complex biomolecules. The researchers led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have used in-situ liquid TEM platform to design sequence-defined peptoids for systematically controlling the formation of gold nanomaterials.
The TEM image of the left shows time-series formation and evolution of gold nanoparticles from spherical to coral-shape. Scale bar 20 nm.
Reference: Feng Yan, Lili Liu, Tiffany R. Walsh, Yu Gong, Patrick Z. El-Khoury, Yanyan Zhang, Zihua Zhu, James J. De Yoreo, Mark H. Engelhard, Xin Zhang and Chun-Long Chen. “Controlled synthesis of highly-branched plasmonic gold nanoparticles through peptoid engineering,” Nature Communications (2018) . Abstract
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