Our work on the “Microscopic Study of Bovine Serum Albumin Adsorption on Zinc Oxide (0001) Surface” has been recently published in Physica status solidi and selected for the journal cover page.
The cover page of Physica status solidi has been for many years presenting the international scientific community with high-quality research in the field of materials science and solid state physics. Properties and functions of various ZnO materials are intensively investigated in biological systems for diagnostics, therapy, health risks assessment as well as bactericidal and decontamination purposes. In our work, the interface between ZnO and biological environment was studied by characterizing adsorption of bovine serum albumin (BSA) and fetal bovine serum (FBS) using atomic force microscopy with CF4‐treated tips. Similar molecular morphologies (thickness around 2 nm) yet different binding forces to ZnO (10 – 25 nN) were observed. These observations are corroborated by atomic scale simulations of BSA on (0001) ZnO surface using a force‐field method and showing rearrangements of zinc surface atoms. Such binding may have an impact also on other properties of ZnO–BSA complex. The work has been done jointly by the teams from the Czech Technical University in Prague and the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences within the international GACR-MOST project with the National Pingtung University in Taiwan.
