A self-assembled nanopatch with peptide–organic multilayers and mechanical properties

Abstract

Peptides enable the construction of a diversity of one-dimensional (1D) and zero-dimensional (0D) nanostructures by molecular self-assembly. To date, it is a great challenge to construct two-dimensional (2D) nanostructures from peptides. Here we introduce an organic molecule to tune the amphiphilic-like peptide assembly to form a peptide–organic 2D nanopatch structure. The nanomechanical properties of the nanopatch were explored by quantitative nanomechanical imaging and force control manipulation. The peptide–organic patches are multilayers composed of several domains, which can be peeled off stepwise. The patch formation provides an approach towards constructing 2D nanostructures by peptide–organic assembly and it could be potentially utilized in a wide range of applications such as functional biomaterials.