Recently, the research team led by Prof Yongxiang Gao published their work titled ‘Design and One-Pot Synthesis of Capsid-Like Gold Colloids with Tunable Surface Roughness and Their Enhanced Sensing and Catalytic Performances’ on ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (IF 8.758). Prof Yongxiang Gao is the corresponding author and Research Associate Professor Guanhua Lin is the first author of the paper.

Design and synthesis of novel colloidal structures has evolved into an important multi-disciplinary research area. Tailoring colloidal structures at the micro/nanoscale promises enhanced and even new materials properties that may find practical use in sensing, energy, catalysis and medicine. Inspired by nature’s design of viral nanoshells to achieve desired functions, we developed a one-pot soft-template method to synthesize biomimetic capsid-like hollow nanostructures for optimization and discovery of material properties for practical uses. We realized hollow colloidal structures composed of multiple tunable mosaic patches of controlled roughness. We showed that colloidal structures with rougher surface architecture displays enhanced SERS responses and catalytic properties. We demonstrated their potential uses as SERS substrates and artificial enzymes in building biosensing systems. These gold colloidal capsids are expected to find more practical applications in medicines, catalysis, electronics, and optics.

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (11774237, 21902107) and the Science and Technology Innovation Commission of Shenzhen (JCYJ20170818141727254).

Link to the publication：https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acsami.0c14802