Controlling the interface between hard and soft moieties can produce functional materials and assemblies for imaging and sensing, regenerative medicine, and catalysis.  We use biologically enabled self-assembly of gold, platinum and silver nanoclusters to create stimuli-responsive heterostructures for the photophysical study of clusters (e.g. dipole effects and transitioning of clusters to particles) and their use as catalysts within biological and nanomaterial assemblies (e.g. oxygen reduction reactions).  One of the strategies for creating biological assemblies is to template size selected gold clusters within a genetically encoded elastin like polymer (ELP).  We can control the assembly of these Au144 clusters using temperature and pH to study their photophysical properties and embed these assemblies within polymer hydrogels.  Further, we exploit the chemical and structural specificity of DNA to not only template fluorescent nanoclusters, but to also enable the bottom-up assembly of heterostructures.<br/> <br/>

Assemblies of gold, platinum and silver nanoclusters: Photophysics and catalysis

255th National Meeting (2018)

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