ALIGNED DIPHENYLALANINE MICRO/NANOTUBES IN PDMS MICROCHANNELS

Diphenylalanine (FF) is a well-known substance with the property of self-assembly, which allows FF to easily organize itself into nanostructures, without needing any external intervention, such as stable nanotubes and microtubes (FFMNTs) when exposed to water and other solvents. The study of FF-generated nanotubes is important due to their diverse applications, including in biosensors, and their ability to act as waveguides. Due to the diverse properties mentioned for FFMNTs, such nanostructures have optical and electronic properties that make them suitable for high-performance biomedical devices. Through the growth of FFMNTs in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microchannels, the objective of this study is to optimize the control of biocompatible microstructure properties, with the ultimate goal of managing the properties of greatest application interest, through understanding its unidirectional morphology. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) revealed the formation of FFMNTs aligned in PDMS microchannels with unidirectionality on different microchannel diameters. In addition to the morphological characterizations, Raman spectroscopy was performed with the aim of analyzing the fingerprint spectrum in the nanostructures, corroborating the imaging data and demonstrating the existence of nanostructures in the microchannels. The proposed methodologies demonstrate the potential application of these microchannels in SERS, SEIRA, waveguides, and other optical and biomedical devices.