The present invention relates to high content surface areas containing nickel and/or cobalt metallic compounds assembled on a modified Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) template, wherein the modified TMV template is engineered to encode unique placement of cysteine residues that self-assemble onto gold patterned surfaces in a substantially aligned fashion, producing a >10 fold increase in surface area. Deposition of ionic metals onto the surface assembled virus templates produce uniform metal coatings for the fabrication of oriented high surface area materials.