The templating of hydrolysed silane species by self-assembling peptide fibrils has been extensively studied at the Centre for Self Organising Molecular Systems based in the University of Leeds . In this paper we present an SEM based study of the pH effects on the peptide fibril templates and the fluoride catalysed templating chemistry and the resulting silica nanotubes.

We compare fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) measurements of the fluorescent nanoparticle, TAMRA, diffusing in non-fluorescent -hence invisible- poly(vinyl-alcohol) (PVA) or Ficoll70 solutions as a function of the polymer concentration, c. We determine changes of the translational diffusion coefficient of TAMRA and fit the data with the universal scaling law (D ∼ exp[−α(c/c*)ν], to extract information about solvent quality. For PVA, we find ν = 0.74, suggesting that water in this case acts as a good solvent, whereas ν = 1.02 in Ficoll70 solutions, indicating theta-like behavior.