Peptoid Nanostructure Deposition Using Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition

Biomimetic materials are fabricated to imitate the behavior of certain biological molecules and the ability to manipulate these programmable materials to form diverse types of structures with a distinct function presents it as a promising alternative material that could be utilized for coating applications in bioengineering and biomedical engineering. Peptoids, a class of biomimetic materials, are N-substituted glycine oligomers that can mimic naturally occurring peptides/proteins and are currently being investigated for their advantages including increased stability, enhanced programmability of the sequence, biocompatibility, and a less complex structure. With these advantages, amphiphilic peptoids can serve as building blocks for assembling more complex nanostructures due to the interactions among hydrophobic side chains and the different patterns formed through their distinct chemical composition. In this study, we demonstrate the ability to manipulate these amphiphilic peptoids for the formation of distinct biomimetic nanostructures on various substrates through deposition via plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). The use of plasma ionization allows the use of sequence-defined synthetic polymers such as peptoids for the formation of stable, and high-information content nanostructures which makes it an attractive for surface agnostic coating. Varying the deposition conditions for peptoid-based material synthesis allows for the formation of various nanostructures. The simplicity, low cost of synthesis and room temperature deposition associated with PECVD allows a broad range of precursors as well as unconventional substrates such as polymers (silicone), and fabrics (such as cotton) to be used. The peptoids used in this study include the Npm4Dig which has been demonstrated to form helical ribbon structures and NBrPE5C2 which has been demonstrated to form nanomembranes. Following deposition of the desired peptoid oligomer on the desired substrate, numerous qualitative and quantitative analysis methods contribute to the visualization of the nanostructures on different substrates and characterization of the chemical composition of the peptoid after the deposition process. The structural and morphological characteristics of the fabricated nanostructures will be studied using scanning and transmission electron microscope (SEM and TEM). The microscopic structure (length, diameter and spacing between nanostructures) as well as FTIR and Raman spectroscopy.