Self-Assembly of Nanoparticles on Live Bacterium: An Avenue to Fabricate Electronic Devices
Recently, hybrid structures of microorganisms with inorganic nanoscale moieties have received great interest owing to their potential in fabricating electronic systems. The electronic properties of metal nanoparticles, as a result of the singleelectron transport of current,[1] make them ideal materials for nanodevices. Concomitantly, the nanostructure of microorganisms such as bacteria,[2] viruses,[3, 4] and yeast[5] are attractive scaffolds for the templating of metal nanoparticles through the interactions of the former with surface charges and the affinity of certain metals for specific biological molecules.[2-7] However, the key challenges in building hybrid devices are 1) to pattern nanostructures without destroying the biological construct of the microorganism and 2) to achieve active integration of a biological response to the electrical transport in a nanoparticle device.
Papers in Nanotechnology
