Symposium C: Bio-Inspired Nanoscale Hybrid Systems

摘要

Symposium C, Bio-Inspired Nanoscale Hybrid Systems, provided an extensive overview of the new and advanced approach to synthesize functional materials and to fabricate nanoscale devices utilizing biomolecules as a key building block. Nature utilizes molecular recognition between complex biomacromolecules to form sophisticated meso- and macroscopic architectures with tremendous control over the placement and orientation of nanoscopic building blocks. On the other hand, the advances of nanotechnology provide us new nanoscale structures including nanoparticles, nanowires, nanofabricated circuits etc. The marriage between biomolecules and these new nanostructructures allows us to envision many scientific breakthroughs and commercial applications. For example, specific interactions between biomolecules can be utilized as a major driving force to build sophisticated 1D, 2D and 3D architectures. C. A. Mirkin (Northwestern Univ.) demonstrated 'biodirected synthesis of functional materials using nanoscale building blocks' where biomolecular interactions such as DNA hybridization is utilized to direct the assembly of nanoparticles to form desired architectures. Several researchers reported various bio-inspired synthesis and assembly results such as the synthesis of metallic nanowires from peptides, DNA-mediated assembly of carbon nanotubes, and 3D assembly of nanoparticles using virus as a template.