Monday, 30 May 2022: 11:20
West Meeting Room 120 (Vancouver Convention Center)
We will discuss the use of a tobacco mosaic virus coat protein (TMVCP) as a versatile platform to synthesize a series of metallic nanomaterials and their applications in energy related electrocatalytic reactions. Taking advantage of the self-assembly properties of TMVCP under different solution conditions, nanoparticles can be embedded onto the disk protein surface or capped by protein subunits. We show that in addition to the eco-friendly synthesis merit, the as prepared materials are superior catalysts in electrocatalytic reactions. While the nanosized silver rings exhibit significant enhancement towards catalysing electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction reaction, the TMVCP-templated two platinum catalyst are promising candidates for methanol oxidation reaction. Besides electrocatalysis, potential applications of protein-metal hybrid systems in heterogeneous organic synthesis are also described. Gold and palladium nanoparticles capped by the bulky protein subunits are employed for two organic reactions and also showed remarkable kinetics.