Investigation on Properties of Collagen Nanowires Quasiepitaxially Grown on Mica Lattice Plane
Abstract Collagen fibrils and hydroxyapatite might recognize each other at the mesoscale by multiple cooperative interactions due to their intrinsically repetitive structured surfaces, and thus effectively directing the biomineralization, a biological process involving regulating the growth of bones, teeth and other organs. In this work, a simple technique was developed to prepare nanowire arrays of biological macromolecules by reversely using the biomineralization mechanism, with results similar to the ‘hot wall epitaxy’, a molecular beam deposition technique under vacuum. With this technique, we successfully cultured rat tail type I collagen monomers adsorbed on the mica (001) lattice plane into collagen nanowire arrays along one unique direction across the whole cleavage surface. Based on the characterization results of AFM, EBSD, and TEM, the quasiepitaxial growth mechanism of collagen nanowires was verified in detail. With low experimental requirements, this technique could precisely manipulate the collagen nanowire arrays despite its simple operations, which potentially provided a highly efficient method to manufacture hydrophilic cell culture vessels, produce biological probes with high specificities, and synthesize novel micro/nano optoelectronic materials.