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Non-Covalent Assembly of Multiple Fluorophores in Edible Protein/Lipid Hydrogels for Applications in Multi-Step Light Harvesting and White-Light Emission

The design and production of biodegradable and sustainable non-toxic materials for solar-energy harvesting and conversion is a significant challenge. Here, our goal was to report the preparation of novel protein/lipid hydrogels and demonstrate their utility in two orthogonal fundamental studies—ligh...

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Autores principales: Ding, Jingwen, Kumar, Challa V.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10458872/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37630280
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/molecules28166028
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author Ding, Jingwen
Kumar, Challa V.
author_facet Ding, Jingwen
Kumar, Challa V.
author_sort Ding, Jingwen
collection PubMed
description The design and production of biodegradable and sustainable non-toxic materials for solar-energy harvesting and conversion is a significant challenge. Here, our goal was to report the preparation of novel protein/lipid hydrogels and demonstrate their utility in two orthogonal fundamental studies—light harvesting and white-light emission. Our hydrogels contained up to 90% water, while also being self-standing and injectable with a syringe. In one application, we loaded these hydrogels with suitable organic donor-acceptor dyes and demonstrated the energy-transfer cascade among four different dyes, with the most red-emitting dye as the energy destination. We hypothesized that the dyes were embedded in the protein/lipid phase away from the water pools as monomeric entities and that the excitation of any of the four dyes resulted in intense emission from the lowest-energy acceptor. In contrast to the energy-transfer cascade, we demonstrate the use of these gels to form a white-light-emitting hydrogel dye assembly, in which excitation migration is severely constrained. By restricting the dye-to-dye energy transfer, the blue, green, and red dyes emit at their respective wavelengths, thereby producing the composite white-light emission. The CIE color coordinates of the emission were 0.336 and 0.339—nearly pure white-light emission. Thus, two related studies with opposite requirements could be accommodated in the same hydrogel, which was made from edible ingredients by a simple method. These gels are biodegradable when released into the environment, sustainable, and may be of interest for energy applications.
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spelling pubmed-104588722023-08-27 Non-Covalent Assembly of Multiple Fluorophores in Edible Protein/Lipid Hydrogels for Applications in Multi-Step Light Harvesting and White-Light Emission Ding, Jingwen Kumar, Challa V. Molecules Article The design and production of biodegradable and sustainable non-toxic materials for solar-energy harvesting and conversion is a significant challenge. Here, our goal was to report the preparation of novel protein/lipid hydrogels and demonstrate their utility in two orthogonal fundamental studies—light harvesting and white-light emission. Our hydrogels contained up to 90% water, while also being self-standing and injectable with a syringe. In one application, we loaded these hydrogels with suitable organic donor-acceptor dyes and demonstrated the energy-transfer cascade among four different dyes, with the most red-emitting dye as the energy destination. We hypothesized that the dyes were embedded in the protein/lipid phase away from the water pools as monomeric entities and that the excitation of any of the four dyes resulted in intense emission from the lowest-energy acceptor. In contrast to the energy-transfer cascade, we demonstrate the use of these gels to form a white-light-emitting hydrogel dye assembly, in which excitation migration is severely constrained. By restricting the dye-to-dye energy transfer, the blue, green, and red dyes emit at their respective wavelengths, thereby producing the composite white-light emission. The CIE color coordinates of the emission were 0.336 and 0.339—nearly pure white-light emission. Thus, two related studies with opposite requirements could be accommodated in the same hydrogel, which was made from edible ingredients by a simple method. These gels are biodegradable when released into the environment, sustainable, and may be of interest for energy applications. MDPI 2023-08-12 /pmc/articles/PMC10458872/ /pubmed/37630280 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/molecules28166028 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Ding, Jingwen
Kumar, Challa V.
Non-Covalent Assembly of Multiple Fluorophores in Edible Protein/Lipid Hydrogels for Applications in Multi-Step Light Harvesting and White-Light Emission
title Non-Covalent Assembly of Multiple Fluorophores in Edible Protein/Lipid Hydrogels for Applications in Multi-Step Light Harvesting and White-Light Emission
title_full Non-Covalent Assembly of Multiple Fluorophores in Edible Protein/Lipid Hydrogels for Applications in Multi-Step Light Harvesting and White-Light Emission
title_fullStr Non-Covalent Assembly of Multiple Fluorophores in Edible Protein/Lipid Hydrogels for Applications in Multi-Step Light Harvesting and White-Light Emission
title_full_unstemmed Non-Covalent Assembly of Multiple Fluorophores in Edible Protein/Lipid Hydrogels for Applications in Multi-Step Light Harvesting and White-Light Emission
title_short Non-Covalent Assembly of Multiple Fluorophores in Edible Protein/Lipid Hydrogels for Applications in Multi-Step Light Harvesting and White-Light Emission
title_sort non-covalent assembly of multiple fluorophores in edible protein/lipid hydrogels for applications in multi-step light harvesting and white-light emission
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10458872/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37630280
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/molecules28166028
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