Thermal and aqueous stability improvement of graphene oxide enhanced diphenylalanine nanocomposites

Abstract

Nanocomposites of diphenylalanine (FF) and carbon based materials provide an opportunity to overcome drawbacks associated with using FF micro- and nanostructures in nanobiotechnology applications, in particular their poor structural stability in liquid solutions. In this study, FF/graphene oxide (GO) composites were found to self-assemble into layered micro- and nanostructures, which exhibited improved thermal and aqueous stability. Dependent on the FF/GO ratio, the solubility of these structures was reduced to 35.65% after 30 min as compared to 92.4% for pure FF samples. Such functional nanocomposites may extend the use of FF structures to e.g. biosensing, electrochemical, electromechanical or electronic applications.

Keywords:

• Diphenylalanine
• nanocomposites
• peptide nanotubes
• graphene oxide
• aqueous stability

Classification:

• 30 Bio-inspired and biomedical materials
• 100 Materials
• 101 Self-assembly / Self-organized materials
• 103 Composites
• 104 Carbon and related materials

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Dr James Sullivan and Rory Herron for access to thermogravimetric measurements, Dr Bartlomiej Lukasz for assistance with SEM, Dr Gareth Redmond for insightful discussions, and Dr Dimitri Scholz for access to instrumentation of the UCD Conway Imaging Core Facility.