Peptidic nanoreactors for light-mediated syntehsis and directed assembly of chiral nanoparticles

Nanoparticles have unique optical, electronic, and magnetic properties that are useful for many applications such as catalysis, imaging and sensing. Recently, chiral nanoparticles are being investogated due to their additional sensitivity to polarized light that can be used to create next-generation sensors and functional nanomaterials. However, top-down synthesis and assembly of chiral nanoparticles is challenging. In this talk, I will discuss peptidic complex coacervate core micelle (C3M) networks as a tunable nanoreactor (NR) for templating chiral nanoparticles as well as assembling them. I will show that NRs can sequester and reduce metal ions within their core. By changing the enantiomer type of the coacervting peptides in the NRs, different chirality can be imposed on the nanoparticles giving rise to tunable optical responses. We then show that the peptidic C3Ms networks can enable the macroscopic ordering of the resulting chiral nanoparticles. Finally, we demonstrate that light can be used to effectively "print" nanoparticles into a peptidic C3M network yielding further control on the resulting device's optical properties.