Assembly and characterization of hybrid virus-inorganic nanotubes

Recently, rod-shaped viruses have attracted attention as biological templates for assembly of nanostructures. Tobamoviruses such as the type strain of Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV-U1, or -common) have a cylindrical shape and dimensions suitable for nanoelectronic applications: 300nm long and 18nm in diameter with a 4nm axial channel. TMV particles can be coated with metals, silica, or semiconductor materials and may also form end-to-end assemblies to be used as interconnects or device channels. In this letter, we report the preparation of TMV-U1 templated organic-metal nanotubes, and their structural characterization using transmission electron microscopy and micro-Raman spectroscopy. Reproducible phonon signatures different from that of native TMV-U1 were observed from the metal-coated TMVs. Our results indicate that Raman spectroscopy can be used for monitoring of the bio-assisted nanostructure assembly and for analyzing the vibrational modes of the resulting bio-inorganic junctions.