Ian Wark Research Institute
ARC Special Research Centre
ARC Special Research Centre
Research Area: Chemistry, chemical engineering, molecular biology and related areas with interest in materials science, nanotechnology and biomaterials
Supervisor:
A/Prof Naba Dutta
Description: Recently, biologically assembled nano-sized noble
metal particles and clusters have attracted significant attention due to
their unique chemical, physical, electronic and surface properties.
These nano-objects have led to advances in the fields of device
fabrication, photochemistry, electrochemistry, optics, magnetic,
electronics, medicine and catalysis. The conformational change of
biomolecules stimulated by controlling the environmental conditions such
as temperature, solvent, pH, ion concentration is a novel bottom-up
approach for template-mediated synthesis of such bio-conjugates. The
bio-conjugates of plasmonic nanoparticles (nanoparticles whose optical
properties are controlled by their size, shape and geometry) are highly
promising for imparting optical responsiveness into nano-scale
structures; and is of significant importance for numerous applications
including sensors, optically triggered drug delivery, biological assay,
immunoassay, microfluidic devices.
In this project, a novel biomimetic protein (protein molecule
synthesised borrowing amino-acid segment from nature) rec-1 resilin and
its environment (pH, temperature, etc) dependent organization will be
employed to develop novel multifunctional fluorescent inorganic
nanoparticles. Particular emphasis will be given to gold and gold/silver
nanoparticles. The self-organization pathways of the protein template
and the developed nanoparticles will be characterized using state-of-the
art scattering, spectroscopic and microscopic techniques.
The student working on the project will have the opportunity to work in
an interesting branch of nanotechnology and develop an in-depth
understanding of different spectroscopic and microscopic techniques
including dynamic light scattering, ultraviolet-visible
spectrophotometry (UV/VIS), fluorescence spectroscopy, Fourier transform
infrared spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), etc.
