Symmetry of Bioinspired Short Peptide Nanostructures and Their Basic Physical Properties

摘要: Supramolecular bioinspired peptide nanostructures are considered as a new frontier in materials science and engineering. The nano-crystalline packing of various nanostructures, especially those lacking center symmetry at the nanoscale, give rise to exceptional physical properties. Specifically, native aromatic diphenylalanine (FF) aliphatic dileucine (LL) based nanotubes, which related hexagonal orthorhombic non-centrosymmetric crystalline groups respectively, exhibit fundamental phenomena, such piezoelectricity second harmonic generation (SHG). This review covers our latest findings on properties FF LL nanostructures. We show that heat treatment temperature range 140–180 °C induces irreversible phase transition wherein all their structure levels (molecular, electronic, optical, space symmetry, morphology, wettability) change. Using high resolution microscopy tools, Kelvin probe force (KPFM), piezoresponse (PFM), SHG, well Raman spectroscopy, we demonstrate phase-transition phenomena nanotubes leads full reconstruction reassembling open-end into fiber-like structures, followed by deep variation centrosymmetric symmetry. As result, newly generated demonstrates neither piezoelectric effect nor nonlinear optical activity.