Fabrication of High Aspect Ratio Gold Nanowires within the Microtubule Lumen

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

Abstract

Gold nanowires have great potential use as interconnects in electronic, photonic, and optoelectronic devices. To date, there are various fabrication strategies for gold nanowires, each one associated with particular drawbacks as they utilize high temperatures, toxic chemicals, or expensive compounds to produce nanowires of suboptimal quality. Inspired by nanowire fabrication strategies that used higher-order biopolymer structures as molds for electroless deposition of gold, we here report a strategy for the growth of gold nanowires from seed nanoparticles within the lumen of microtubules. Luminal targeting of seed particles occurs through covalently linked Fab fragments of an antibody recognizing the acetylated lysine 40 on the luminal side of α-tubulin. Gold nanowires grown by electroless deposition within the microtubule lumen exhibit a homogeneous morphology and high aspect ratios with a mean diameter of 20 nm. Our approach is fast, simple, and inexpensive and does not require toxic chemicals or other harsh conditions.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3659-3667
Number of pages9
JournalNano letters
Volume22
Issue number9
Publication statusPublished - 21 Apr 2022
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

PubMed 35446032
unpaywall 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c00255
Mendeley 6a97ab9b-81ae-3d60-9587-dd7cf2e3b2ec
ORCID /0000-0002-0750-8515/work/142235549

Keywords

Research priority areas of TU Dresden

Keywords

  • electroless deposition, gold nanowires, microtubule lumen, microtubules, templated growth, Nanoparticles, Nanowires/chemistry, Microtubules/chemistry, Tubulin, Gold/chemistry