Dipolar relaxation on-demand in nanoparticle-polypeptide hybrid materials – DINAPO

The DINAPO project aims at combining nanoparticles (NPs) and peptidic polymers to form hybrid materials, structured at the nanoscale, tuned by the nature of the building blocks and responsive to external stimuli (electrical, mechanical and optical). Our ambition is to couple the intrinsic functional properties of these blocks (piezoelectricity, charge transport, surface plasmon, photo-response) in order to design a new class of materials with dipolar relaxation adjusted on-demand. Our methodology makes the link between the description of dielectric properties at the macroscopic scale (scale of the measurement) and at the nanometric one (scale of the physical response) by optimizing the chemical design of the building blocks (NPs and polymers), the structuration process (directed self-assembly), the physical measurements (dielectric spectroscopy and stimuli-responsiveness), and the modelling (from macro to nano).