Highly efficient production of various organic nanotubes with different surfaces and their application to an adsorbent

Self-assembly of simple glycyl-glycine-containing peptide lipids, both in water and alcohol, gave various organic nanotubes covered with different functional surfaces in a facile production manner. Especially, the self-assembly in alcohol media increased the yield of nanotube by more than 5 times and decreased the production time by less than one-tenth when compared with conventional self-assembly in water. The glycyl-glycine residue proved to be critical to afford a tubular morphology stabilized by the polyglycine-II-type hydrogen-bond networks. Therefore, the glycyl-glycine-containing peptide lipids can give nanotubes with desired surfaces by connecting an appropriate functional moiety to the glycyl-glycine residue. In addition, the adsorption ability of gold nanoparticles to the specific nanotube surface showed the high potentiality of the nanotubes as an adsorbent.