Preparation of gold-peptide hybrid nanoparticles and its applications in catalytic reduction of methylene blue

In the present work, we studied a method for the synthesis of uniform gold-peptide hierarchical superstructures using tyrosine rich peptide, Tyr-Tyr-Leu-Tyr-Tyr (YYLYY). Peptide nanoparticles self-assembled by dityrosine bonds were synthesized through the photo-crosslinking reaction of the peptide, and gold-peptide hybrid nanoparticles were synthesized using biomineralization properties of tyrosine in a green synthetic manner. The synthesized gold-peptide hybrid nanoparticles were then characterized by transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, dynamic light scattering, UV-vis spectroscopy, scanning transmission electron microscopy-energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction. Furthermore, the catalytic activity of gold-peptide hybrid nanoparticles was confirmed by the reduction reaction of methylene blue where the catalytic reaction rate constant was 13.4 × 10^-3 s^-1.