Probing the Nature of Charge Transfer at Nano鈥揃io Interfaces: Peptides on Metal Oxide Nanoparticles

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• 作者：Pilarisetty Tarakeshwar ; Julio L. Palma ; Gregory P. Holland ; Petra Fromme ; Jeffery L. Yarger ; Vladimiro Mujica
• 刊名：The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters
• 出版年：2014
• 出版时间：October 16, 2014
• 年：2014
• 卷：5
• 期：20
• 页码：3555-3559
• 全文大小：273K
• ISSN：1948-7185

文摘

Characterizing the nano鈥揵io interface has been a long-standing endeavor in the quest for novel biosensors, biophotovoltaics, and biocompatible electronic devices. In this context, the present computational work on the interaction of two peptides, A6K (Ac-AAAAAAK-NH₂) and A7 (Ac-AAAAAAA-NH₂) with semiconducting TiO₂ nanoparticles is an effort to understand the peptide鈥搈etal oxide nanointerface. These investigations were spurred by recent experimental observations that nanostructured semiconducting metal oxides templated with A6K peptides not only stabilize large proteins like photosystem-I (PS-I) but also exhibit enhanced charge-transfer characteristics. Our results indicate that 伪-helical structures of A6K are not only energetically more stabilized on TiO₂ nanoparticles, but the resulting hybrids also exhibit enhanced electron transfer characteristics. This enhancement can be attributed to substantial changes in the electronic characteristics at the peptide-TiO₂ interface. Apart from understanding the mechanism of electron transfer (ET) in peptide-stabilized PS-I on metal oxide nanoparticles, the current work also has implications in the development of novel solar cells and photocatalysts.

Keywords:

biophotovoltaics; sensors; devices; charge-transfer; DFT calculations; semiconducting nanomaterials