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Updated: Jun 11, 2026

Formation of Ordered Biomolecular Structures by the Self-assembly of Short Peptides
Published on: November 21, 2013
Hierarchical assembly of diphenylalanine into dendritic nanoarchitectures
Tae Hee Han1, Jun Kyun Oh, Gyoung-Ja Lee
1Department of Materials Science and Engineering, KI for the Nanocentury, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon 305-701, Republic of Korea.
Abstract:
Highly ordered, multi-dimensional dendritic nanoarchitectures were created via self-assembly of diphenylalanine from an acidic buffer solution. The self-similarity of dendritic structures was characterized by examining their fractal dimensions with the box-counting method. The fractal dimension was determined to be 1.7, which demonstrates the fractal dimension of structures generated by diffusion limited aggregation on a two-dimensional substrate surface. By confining the dendritic assembly of diphenylalanine within PDMS microchannels, the self-similar dendritic growth could be hierarchically directed to create linearly assembled nanoarchitectures. Our approach offers a novel pathway for creating and directing hierarchical nanoarchitecture from biomolecular assembly.
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