Piezoelectric properties reflecting nanostructures of tetrathiafulvalene and chloranil complexes using cyclic peptide nanotube scaffolds

Abstract

AbstractTetrathiafulvalene (TTF) and chloranil were introduced at the side chains of different cyclic tripeptides, which were self‐assembled into peptide nanotubes (PNTs). PNTs were used as scaffolds for alignment of the charge‐transfer complexes between TTF and chloranil, and they were prepared via two methods, one is that mixing a PNT comprising only TTF with a PNT comprising only chloranil (method 1), and the other is that one pot mixing of cyclic tripeptides with TTF and cyclic tripeptides with chloranil to be self‐assembled into PNTs (method 2). These PNTs naturally associated to form PNT bundles. The surface potentials of the PNT bundles became larger for the PNTs carrying charge‐transfer complexes along the PNT (method 2) than those between PNTs (method 1). This bundle of PNT carrying charge‐transfer complexes along the PNT (method 2) showed a hysteresis response in the piezoelectric force curve with varying bias voltages according to piezoelectric force microscope measurements.