(177h) Leveraging Biology for Functional Inorganic Nanomaterials Development

The complexity and functionality of biological molecules enable all life on earth. Inspired by various natural processes, several researchers have implemented biomolecules to template, mineralize and assemble nanomaterials in ways that can be difficult to achieve via tradition synthetic pathway. Additionally, replacing classical nanoparticle ligands with peptides, proteins, and nucleic acids provides routes to systematically manipulate the biotic/abiotic interface to tune materials properties. This avenue of “bio-inspired” nanomaterials is relatively understudied, where a lack of understanding structure/function relationships leads to trial and error approaches that limit fundamental knowledge and ultimately hinders technological progress.

In this talk, research focusing on the implementation of fundamental structural science toward the development of bio-enabled nanomaterials will be presented. A particular focus will be given to interactions at the biotic/abiotic interface to understanding this interfaces involvement with dictating materials properties. Using a suite of synchrotron radiation characterization methods, including in-situ measurements, atomic-scale nanomaterial models are generated using advanced structural modeling methods. These nanoparticle configurations, created solely from experimental structural data, can then be used to assess properties as a function of atomic-scale structural disorder, particularly at the nanomaterial surface. This knowledge can help focus future efforts in “bio-inspired” nanomaterials development to fully harness to power of biology for creating nanomaterials with enhanced/emergent properties.