Investigation of longitudinal assembly and functionalization of gold nanorods using peptides

The longitudinal assembly of gold nanorods (AuNRs) has previously been demonstrated with alkanedithiols. An analogous assembly of AuNRs has been investigated using peptides containing cysteine, demonstrating similar longitudinal interplasmon coupling to hexanedithiol assemblies. Peptides are an attractive class of molecules for AuNR functionalization due to their functional flexibility and high-throughput production techniques. Developing peptide linkers for AuNR assembly and functionalization is an important step toward potential biomedical and nanotechnology applications.