Interfacial Assembly of Bundlemer Brushes

Bundlemers are computationally designed peptides that self-assemble in water into coiled coils, essentially monodisperse nanoparticles with tunable surface chemistry. Leveraging this tunability we have demonstrated bundlemer viability as molecular building blocks by producing predesigned 2D lattices, nanocages, and nanotubes through tailoring their surface chemistry and solution assembly conditions. Recently, we have used bundlemers as macromonomers to create stiff extremely high aspect ratio, hybrid covalent-supramolecular polymers through click chemistry between the neighboring bundlemer ends. Through incorporation of substrate binding terminal residues and careful selection of bundlemer functionalization we can design bundlemers to assemble with preferred orientation on a variety of surfaces and fine tune their adsorption kinetics. We can then develop bundlemer brushes through either a grafting to approach coupling the aforementioned high aspect ratio hybrid covalent-supramolecular polymers directly to a substrate through functionalized termini or a grafting from approach using a template layer of bundlemers as reaction sites for subsequent bundlemer coupling or assembly.