Gold nanoparticle-coated apoferritin conductive nanowires

Gloria Pelayo-Punzano; Rocío Jurado; Miguel López-Haro; Rafael Cuesta; José J Calvino; José M Domínguez-Vera; Natividad Gálvez

doi:10.1039/d3ra03186a

Gold nanoparticle-coated apoferritin conductive nanowires

RSC Adv. 2023 Jun 27;13(28):19420-19428. doi: 10.1039/d3ra03186a. eCollection 2023 Jun 22.

Authors

Gloria Pelayo-Punzano¹, Rocío Jurado¹, Miguel López-Haro², Rafael Cuesta³, José J Calvino², José M Domínguez-Vera¹, Natividad Gálvez¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Granada 18071 Granada Spain ngalvez@ugr.es.
² Department of Material Science and Metallurgy Engineering and Inorganic Chemistry, University of Cadiz 11510 Cadiz Spain.
³ Department of Organic and Inorganic Chemistry, EPS Linares, University of Jaen 23700 Linares Spain.

Abstract

Gold-metallic nanofibrils were prepared from three different iso-apoferritin (APO) proteins with different Light/Heavy (L/H) subunit ratios (from 0% up to 100% L-subunits). We show that APO protein fibrils have the ability to in situ nucleate and grow gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) simultaneously assembled on opposite strands of the fibrils, forming hybrid inorganic-organic metallic nanowires. The AuNPs are arranged following the pitch of the helical APO protein fiber. The mean size of the AuNPs was similar in the three different APO protein fibrils studied in this work. The AuNPs retained their optical properties in these hybrid systems. Conductivity measurements showed ohmic behavior like that of a continuous metallic structure.