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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2011
A secondary ammonium hydrochloride of the peptidic lipid, in which an L-prolyl-L-prolyl-L-proline fragment is coupled with an L-glutamate derivative carrying two long alkyl chains, self-assembles in water to form nanotube structures consisting of a single bilayer wall. Using this lipid nanotube as a template, we carried out the sol—gel transcription to metal oxide nanotubes from aqueous lipid nanotubes without solution catalysts. TEM analysis of the aqueous gel phase, coupled with electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) revealed the presence of a high population of hybrid nanotube architectures with a well-defined lipid/silica interface and thus proved the success of structural transcription from the lipid nanotube template. Besides silica, when changing the lipid nanotube in aqueous solutions to an iced lipid nanotube as a template, we also succeeded in the transcription to transition metal oxide nanotubes (titanium oxide, tantalum oxide, vanadium oxide) was also succeeded. The weakly acidic and mildly catalytic headgroup of the lipid is responsible for the formation of the metal oxide on the surface of the lipid nanotube template.