Nanospectroscopy and nanomechanics of protein materials

Most of the polymers, rubbers and plastics that are used by industry come from petrochemistry. In order to reduce our dependency to oil and gas, it is necessary to produce, from other sources, materials with similar performances. In this respect, Nature has provided us with a wide range of interesting materials built from polypeptides (proteins), like spider-silk, wool and hoof. They all have outstanding mechanical properties that are sometime unmatched by the corresponding man-made products (spider-silk is a better shock absorber than Kevlar). Hence, in this proposal, I want to explore how proteins can be processed into fibers and hydrogels with controlled structural and mechanical properties from the nano-scale to the macro-scale. Foreseeable applications include smart textiles, tissue engineering scaffolds, and high-specificity membranes for filtration. I will start with a specific class of proteins that are known to self-assemble into nanofilaments that are both very extensible, more than 3-folds, and tough to break. To be able to handle these proteins in a controlled and contamination-free way, I am asking for several pieces of equipment that will create a small protein characterization and storage facility. Since proteins can not be produced in large quantities and because we will have to deal with nano-scale objects anyway, I am designing a unique nanomechanics / nanospectroscopy platform. The experimental set-up is based on an atomic force microscope (AFM) mounted on an inverted optical microscope. What we want is to add vibrational spectroscopy capabilities to this instrument. This will enable us to correlate nanomechanics measurement performed with the AFM to protein structure. Hence, I am also asking for a single grating spectrophotometer and two lasers to perform tip-enhanced raman spectroscopy measurements.