Fig. 5.

Matching an inorganic structure to a primary peptide sequence. (a) Schematic of peptides designed specifically to fit inorganic surface relief. (b) The relief surface is AlGaAs veins protruding from the GaAs background; four different samples were tested, each with different separation d of the AlGaAs veins. (c) The peptide of a with three leucines on each end shows adhesion to the AlGaAs veins for the three largest vein separations but shows abrupt adhesion loss for separation d less than the hydrophobic peptide end group length. The peptide with five leucines shows adhesion loss for the two smallest vein separations. Ten oligomer of aspartic acid applied to this series of samples does not show the dramatic drop in adhesion for the smallest vein separations.