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Structure and photoelectrochemistry of a virus capsid-TiO2 nanocomposite
Craig Jolley1, Michael Klem, Richard Harrington
1Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, USA.
Abstract:
The use of protein templates to direct the formation of inorganic nanostructures offers a novel bio-inspired route to nanomaterial synthesis that avoids the use of harsh reaction conditions and offers unique functionalities including biocompatibility and hierarchical assembly. Pair distribution function (PDF) analysis from total X-ray scattering has been used to determine the structure of TiO2 nanoparticles grown within an icosahedral virus capsid. The protein-TiO2 composites are similar to nanocrystalline anatase and show photocatalytic activity. PDF analysis is ideally suited to the study of protein-inorganic nanocomposites, and may be able to provide information about the hard/soft interface.
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