Peptides Grafted from Solids for the Control of Interfacial Properties

Abstract

We have used solid-phase peptide synthesis to graft a peptide monolayer from a solid in order to modify the interfacial properties. We grafted a 15-residue peptide, EKEKEKEKEKEKEGG, containing a zwitterionic sequence of alternating lysine and glutamic acid residues from the surface of an aminosilanized silicon wafer by placing the silicon wafer within a commercial microwave peptide synthesizer. Such synthesizers are routinely used to make peptides on porous beads, but the peptides are subsequently cleaved and used independently of the solid support; our aim is to utilize the covalently bound peptide to control the surface properties without the need for cleavage and reattachment. We confirme..