Finding a synthetic pathway to structurally well-defined mimetics of nacre has been of great interest in developing durable composite materials. The ordered hierarchical arrangement of organic and inorganic layers, forming a brick-and-mortar architecture, is critical to produce the extraordinarily high strength and toughness of nacre. Here we introduce peptoid nanosheets as a versatile two-dimensional platform to develop artificial nacre materials. A common feature of nacreous proteins is that they are highly acidic organic, containing a large amount of Asp and Glu residues. Therefore, we synthesized series of acidic peptoid nanosheets to mimic as templates from which to grow calcium carbonate layers. Through a CO2 diffusion method, we produced calcium carbonate mineralized nanosheets, that were characterized via SEM, AFM, and EDX. This simple process results in flat nanoscale units of alternating organic and inorganic layers. This is a significant step towards the construction of well-defined nanocomposite materials with a brick-and-mortar architecture that are expected to exhibit exceptional mechanical properties.

Peptoid nanosheets as a template for calcium carbonate mineralization

248th National Meeting (2014)

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