Short aromatic dipeptides can self-assemble into ordered structures at the nano-scale. These assemblies include nanotubes, nanospheres, nano-plates and hydrogels with nano-scale order (Reches, Gazit, Science, 2003; Nature Nanotechology, 2006, 2007).  Peptide nanotubes (PNT) represent a novel class of nanotubes of biological origin as an appealing alternative to carbon nanotubes.

It has been observed that these biological nanostructures possess paramount properties of different origin allowing to find at the intersection Biology-Physics-Engineering new advanced nanotechnological applications using the PNT building blocks.

The basis for the new nanotechnology presented in this report is recently developed new biomolecules deposition method.  It may be applied to PNT coatings on unlimited area with high density and homogeneity, controllable thickness as well for fabricating patterned PNT structures. We show in the lecture that vertically oriented PNT affords to develop new envoromentally clean nanodevices.

We found that highly oriented peptide nanotubular bioinspired structures may demonstrate new surprising physical properties such as dielectric, electrochemical, and wettability. PNT "nanoforest" creates a biomimetic "lotus-type" structure and  allow observation of pronounced superhydrophobic effect which might be used for self-cleaned smart windows and solar cells.

We report on new generic PNT-based technology toward "green" energy storage devices-Supercapacitors. Deposition of PNT arrays strongly increase efficiency of these electrochemical units due to high density PNT coating. In the developed electrostatic supercapacitors aromatic vertically oriented dipeptide nanotubes have been used for modification of  supercapacitor  carbon electrodes.  We demonstrate that PNT-modified electrodes possess much higher double-layer capacitance than that the CNT-based electrodes.

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