Highly efficient production of various organic nanotubes with different surfaces and their application to an adsorbent

Self-assembly of simple glycyl–glycine-containing peptide lipids, both in water and alcohol, gave various organic nanotubes covered with different functional surfaces in a facile production manner. Especially, the self-assembly in alcohol media increased the yield of nanotube by more than 5 times and decreased the production time by less than one-tenth when compared with conventional self-assembly in water. The glycyl–glycine residue proved to be critical to afford a tubular morphology stabilized by the polyglycine-II-type hydrogen-bond networks. Therefore, the glycyl–glycine-containing peptide lipids can give nanotubes with desired surfaces by connecting an appropriate functional moiety to the glycyl–glycine residue. In addition, the adsorption ability of gold nanoparticles to the specific nanotube surface showed the high potentiality of the nanotubes as an adsorbent.