Crystal-chemistry of clinochlore for biochemical assays

The control of the bond between biomolecules and a solid surface has a meaningful impact in many research areas and technological implications, in particular in the construction of micro-arrays, biosensors and in biotechnology. Recently it has been shown that the cleavage plane of a chlorite can interact with biomolecules such as DNA or nucleotides to produce a spatial ordering via electrostatic force. In this work we present for the first time the crystal-chemistry of a chlorite successfully used to condense, order, and self-assemble complex molecules such as DNA and nucleotides. The purpose was to better understand the relationship between chlorite cleavage characteristics, in terms of nanomorphology and surface potential, and its average crystal chemistry. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction and AFM-EFM were used to address quantitatively the investigation.