Synthesis of uniform silica rods, curved silica wires, and silica bundles using filamentous fd virus as a template.

We explored fd as a template to direct the formation of silica nanomaterials with different morphologies through simple sol-gel chemistry[1]. Depending on the conditions silica nanowires can be formed, which seem to accurately transcript the bending conformation and the length of the fd viruses in solution. But also surprisingly straight silica rods may be formed, and under other conditions bow-tie-shaped bundles of rods are formed, which have a remarkably well defined shape and dimension.