Synthesis and alignment of discrete polydiacetylene-peptide nanostructures

Oligopeptides bearing internal diacetylene units are shown to self-assemble in water into one-dimensional nanostructures and aligned macroscopic hydrogels. The diacetylene units can be photopolymerized into polydiacetylenes that run coincident to the nanostructure and noodle long axes, and the resulting nanostructures show evidence for ambipolar charge transport. This self-assembly, alignment and polymerization technique provides a rapid way to produce globally aligned collections of conjugated polymer chains.