Biochemical/Inorganic Hybrid Materials

Dear Colleagues,

By now, biochemistry and material science have been independently developed. As it has progressed, biochemistry has given many findings in relation to various organisms and biomolecules. In addition, material science has produced abundant materials with attractive features and functions. Nowadays, on their boundary field, novel biochemical/inorganic hybrid materials are a key focus. In this new field, by taking advantage of each field, many hybrid materials with attractive and practical functions have been obtained. These hybrid materials are composed of microbes or biomolecules and inorganic materials such as nanoparticles, substrates, and metal organic framework (MOF) compounds. For example, hybrid materials composed of enzymes and inorganic substrates or nanoparticles are used as biosensors and/or biofuel cells. In those studies, enzymes are used instead of inorganic catalysts to achieve desired functions under ambient conditions. Furthermore, by using their metabolism, many microbe-immobilized materials are also reported. In this field, improvements of substrates as electrodes or mediators are being researched. In recent years, hybrid materials composed of proteins and MOFs have been curiously investigated. These materials immobilize proteins on the surface of MOFs, or the proteins themselves are constituents of MOFs as pillar, and their properties receive much research attention.

This Special Issue of Materials, “Biochemical/Inorganic Hybrid Materials”, deals with not only biosensors and biofuel cells, as mentioned above, but also with related hybrid materials such as catalysts, protein- or microbe-immobilization, stabilization of proteins or enzymes, and self-assembled monolayers.

Dr. Daisuke Nakane
Prof. Dr. Takashiro Akitsu
Guest Editors

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