Chirality-induced Spin Selectivity in Heterochiral Short-Peptide-Carbon Nanotube Hybrid Networks – Role of Supramolecular

Abstract

Supramolecular short-peptide assemblies have been widely used for the development of biomaterials with potential biomedical applications. These peptides can self-assemble in multitude of chiral hierarchical structures triggered by the application of different stimuli, such as changes in temperature, pH, solvent, etc. The self-assembly process is very susceptible to the chemical composition of the peptides, being affected by specific amino acid sequence, type and chirality. The resulting supramolecular chirality of these materials has been explored to modulate protein and cell interactions. Recently, significant attention has been focused on the development of chiral materials with potential spintronic applications as it has been shown that transport of charge carriers through a chiral environment polarizes the carrier spins. This effect, named Chirality Induced Spin Selectivity or CISS, has been studied in different chiral organic molecules and materials, as well as carbon nanotubes functionalized with chiral molecules. Nevertheless, this effect has been only explored in homochiral systems in which the chirality of the medium, and hence the resulting spin polarization, is defined by the chirality of the molecule, with limited options for tunability. Herein, we have developed heterochiral carbon nanotube-short-peptide materials made by the combination of two different chiral sources, that is, homochiral peptides (L/D) + glucono-δ-lactone. We show that the presence of a small amount of glucono-δ-lactone with fixed chirality can alter the supramolecular chirality of the medium, thereby modulating the sign of the spin signal from “up” to “down” and vice versa. In addition, small amounts of glucono-δ-lactone can even induce non-zero spin polarization in an otherwise achiral and spin-inactive peptide-nanotube composite. Such “chiral doping” strategies could allow development of complimentary spintronic devices on a single material platform, opening novel design directions for CISS-based spintronic devices and circuits.