Mechanisms of Metal Mineralization on Biotemplates for Nanowire Synthesis

The underlying fundamental mechanisms governing biomineralization of palladium on virus biotemplates were studied using different virus-palladium systems. The Barley Stripes Mosaic Virus (BSMV) has been applied as a new biotemplate for the synthesis of palladium nanowires. BSMV-metal templating has subsequently been compared to those of the Tobacco Mosaic Viruses (wild type and mutants) to attain insight into the mechanisms of adsorption and reduction of precursor onto biotemplates. Mineralization was performed in a 3mL chemical reactor, using the recently discovered facile synthetic method  known as the hydrothermal synthesis. Comparative kinetic and adsorption studies were performed using UV-Vis spectroscopy with the different virus-metal systems under different conditions of pH, temperature and reactant ratios. BSMV is shown to be an expedient and alternate template suitable for production of very high quality nanowires which are uniform, controllable and monodisperse. Such properties make this template a suitable/superior alternative to many current biotemplates.  Furthermore, the elucidation of pertinent fundamental parameters provide a more robust understanding of mechanisms crucial for scaleup and directed synthesis in the hydrothermal synthesis on TMVs and BSMV.