Innovation Pipeline

The efficiency and elegance of materials occurring in nature have always been an inspiration to researchers. Trying to achieve similar results via nanoengineering, scientists are now working on nanoscale particles that automatically orient themselves into unique materials with powerful properties.
It makes sense, this self-assembly approach, because it’s simply too difficult to manipulate nanoparticles with lab devices, no matter how small they are. But if conditions are arranged correctly, self-assembly could be an effective way to manufacture new materials.
Consequently, there has been a lot of work in the area of self-assembly. In one very interesting project, Tel Aviv University researchers reportedly were able to grow peptides resembling small forests of grass that repelled dust and water.

Operating in the range of 100 nanometers (roughly one-billionth of a meter), graduate student Lihi Adler-Abramovich and a team working under Prof. Ehud Gazit in TAU’s department of molecular microbiology and biotechnology developed a novel way to control peptide molecules. The technique could translate into self-cleaning coatings for windows and solar panels.

It could also enable self-assembly of short peptides into a structure with the functionality of a supercapacitor. That gets electrical engineers excited about the potential applications for batteries, because capacitors are critical to batteries in which bursts of energy are important, including lithium batteries. By Lee Bruno