Publications de Raffaele Mezzenga

Liquid–liquid crystalline phase separation of filamentous colloids and semiflexible polymers: experiments, theory and simulations

Liquid–liquid crystalline phase separation (LLCPS) is the process by which an initially homogenous single-phase solution composed of a solvent-most frequently water- and a solute-typically rigid or semiflexible macromolecules, polymers, supramolecular aggr ...

IOP Publishing2025

Shape retaining self-healing metal-coordinated hydrogels

Raffaele Mezzenga, Alvaro Lino Boris Charlet, Esther Amstad

Metal-coordinated hydrogels are physical hydrogels entirely crosslinked by complexes between ligand decorated polymers and metal ions. The mechanical properties of these hydrogels strongly depend on the density and dynamics of metal-coordinated interaction ...

2021

Half a century of amyloids: past, present and future

Raffaele Mezzenga, Hilal Lashuel

Amyloid diseases are global epidemics with profound health, social and economic implications and yet remain without a cure. This dire situation calls for research into the origin and pathological manifestations of amyloidosis to stimulate continued develop ...

Royal Society of Chemistry2020

Ubiquitous aluminium contamination in water and amyloid hybrid membranes as a sustainable possible solution

Raffaele Mezzenga, Francesco Stellacci, Malvina Julia Ida Pauchard

We develop a membrane technology based on amyloid fibrils to remove aluminium from water and minimize its exposure to humans. We study aluminium adsorption by amyloid fibrils by evaluating the binding isotherms, the thermodynamics and the effects of differ ...

Royal Society of Chemistry2019

Microtubule-Binding R3 Fragment from Tau Self-Assembles into Giant Multistranded Amyloid Ribbons

Raffaele Mezzenga, Hilal Lashuel, Nadine Aït Bouziad

Tau protein and its fragments self-assemble into amyloid fibrils in the presence of polyanions, such as heparin. By combining microscopy, scattering, and spectroscopy techniques, we studied the aggregation of the 26-mer Tau-derived peptide alone, Tau306-32 ...

Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH2016

Micro- and nanoscale hierarchical structure of core-shell protein microgels

Raffaele Mezzenga, Giovanni Dietler, Francesco Simone Ruggeri

Protein nanofibrils were first discovered in the context of misfolding and neurodegenerative diseases but have recently been found in naturally occurring functional materials including algal adhesives, bacterial coatings, and even mammalian melanosomes. Th ...

Royal Society of Chemistry2016

Direct visualization of dispersed lipid bicontinuous cubic phases by cryo-electron tomography

Raffaele Mezzenga, Davide Demurtas, Cécile Hébert, Paul Guichard

Bulk and dispersed cubic liquid crystalline phases (cubosomes), present in the body and in living cell membranes, are believed to play an essential role in biological phenomena. Moreover, their biocompatibility is attractive for nutrient or drug delivery s ...

Nature Publishing Group2015

Isolation and Characterization of Monodisperse Core Shell Nanoparticle Fractions

Raffaele Mezzenga, Francesco Stellacci, Randy Patrick Carney

Monodispersity is a key property to control the self-assembly of colloidal particles, and is typically reached after fine-tuning of the synthesis conditions. Monodisperse particle fractions can also be separated from polydisperse suspensions via ultracentr ...

American Chemical Society2015

The Influence of Arginine on the Response of Enamel Matrix Derivative (EMD) Proteins to Thermal Stress: Towards Improving the Stability of EMD-Based Products

John Christopher Plummer, Raffaele Mezzenga, Peter Fischer, Alessandra Apicella, Matteo Gregorio Modesto Marascio

In a current procedure for periodontal tissue regeneration, enamel matrix derivative (EMD), which is the active component, is mixed with a propylene glycol alginate (PGA) gel carrier and applied directly to the periodontal defect. Exposure of EMD to physio ...

Public Library Science2015

Resonance Light Scattering in Dye-Aggregates Forming in Dewetting Droplets

Raffaele Mezzenga, Gian-Luca Bona, Roland Hany, Jakob Heier

Small organic semiconducting molecules assembling into supramolecular J- and H- aggregates have attracted much attention due to outstanding optoelectronic properties. However, their easy and reproducible fabrication is not yet sufficiently developed for in ...

American Chemical Society2014

Diyne-Functionalized Fullerene Self-Assembly for Thin Film Solid-State Polymerization

Raffaele Mezzenga, Gaëtan Wicht, Roland Hany, Jakob Heier

C-60 fullerene derivatives bearing aliphatic chains can self-assemble into versatile supramolecular structures. Cross-linking of such self-assembled morphologies is an attractive approach to enhance the structural stability of these self-organized structur ...

American Chemical Society2014

Universal Behavior in the Mesoscale Properties of Amyloid Fibrils

Raffaele Mezzenga, Paolo De Los Rios, Salvatore Assenza

Amyloid fibrils are ubiquitous proteinaceous aggregates occurring in vivo and in vitro, with an invariant structural fingerprint at the molecular length scale. However, interpretation of their mesoscopic architectures is complicated by diverse observable p ...

2014

Growth and Alignment of Thin Film Organic Single Crystals from Dewetting Patterns

Raffaele Mezzenga, Gaëtan Wicht, Thomas Geiger, Gian-Luca Bona, Roland Hany, Jakob Heier

Studying and understanding the conditions under which organic semiconductors can be engineered to form aligned single crystals in thin films is of primary importance owing to their unique orientation-dependent optoelectronic properties. Efforts to reach th ...

Amer Chemical Soc2013

Low-Temperature Preparation of Tailored Carbon Nanostructures in Water

Raffaele Mezzenga, Vincent Laporte, Davide Demurtas, Anna Fontcuberta i Morral, Bernt Ketterer, Holger Frauenrath, Tobias Hoheisel, Ruth Szilluweit, Martin Fritzsche

The development of low-temperature carbonization procedures promises to provide novel nanostructured carbon materials that are of high current interest in materials science and technology. Here, we report a "wet-chemical" carbonization method that utilizes ...

American Chemical Society2012

Dewetting-driven hierarchical self-assembly of small semiconducting molecules

Raffaele Mezzenga, Gian-Luca Bona, Roland Hany, Jakob Heier

We describe the self-organization of PCBM and a cyanine dye on chemically patterned surfaces during spin coating from solution. On homogeneous surfaces, a transient bilayer forms, which in a later stage decomposes into PCBM droplets in a matrix of the cyan ...

2012

Understanding amyloid aggregation by statistical analysis of atomic force microscopy images

Raffaele Mezzenga, Giovanni Dietler, Paolo De Los Rios, Jérôme Flakowski

The aggregation of proteins is central to many aspects of daily life, including food processing, blood coagulation, eye cataract formation disease and prion-related neurodegenerative infections[1–5]. However, the physical mechanisms responsible for amyloid ...

Nature Publishing Group2010

Self-assembly of polypeptide/pi-conjugated polymer/polypeptide triblock copolymers in rod-rod-rod and coll-rod-coil conformations

Raffaele Mezzenga, Mohamad Hojeij

Self-assembly in the bulk of a series of hybrid triblock copolymers formed by a poly(9,9-dihexylfluorene-2,7-diyl) (PHF) middle block and two poly(gamma-benzyl-L-glutamate) (PBLG) end blocks has been studied. Since the alpha-helical secondary structure of ...

American Chemical Society2008

Hyperbranched polymers as modifiers for thermoset resins

Raffaele Mezzenga

EPFL2001