The fabrication of two-dimensional (2D) biomineral nanosheets is of high interest owing to their promise for applications in electronics, filtration, catalysis, and chemical sensing. Using a facile approach inspired by biomineralization in nature, we fabricate laterally macroscopic calcium oxalate nanosheets using β-folded peptides. The template peptides are composed of repetitive glutamic acid and leucine amino acids, self-organized at the air-water interface. Surface-specific sum frequency generation spectroscopy and molecular dynamics simulations reveal that the formation of oxalate nanosheets relies on the peptide-Ca 2+ ion interaction at the interface, which not only restructures the peptides but also templates Ca 2+ ions into a calcium oxalate dihydrate lattice. Combined, this enables the formation of a critical structural intermediate in the assembly pathway toward the oxalate sheet formation. These insights into peptide-ion interfacial interaction are important for designing novel inorganic 2D materials.
CITATION STYLE
Lu, H., Schäfer, A., Lutz, H., Roeters, S. J., Lieberwirth, I., Muñoz-Espí, R., … Weidner, T. (2019). Peptide-Controlled Assembly of Macroscopic Calcium Oxalate Nanosheets. Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, 10(9), 2170–2174. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.9b00684
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