Self-assembly of anisotropic tobacco mosaic virus nanoparticles on gold substrate

A facile approach to assembled virus film with tunable structure is presented. Rod-like tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) was selected as the prototype in this study for its anisotropic structural feature. TMV can either "lie down" or "stand up" on gold substrate by tuning the solution pH. A quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring was used to monitor the pH-dependent self-assembly behavior of TMV nanoparticles, and atomic force microscopy and single molecule force spectroscopy further confirmed the different assembly structures