用于太阳能收集和转换的可生物降解和可持续无毒材料的设计和生产是一项重大挑战。这里,我们的目标是报告新型蛋白质/脂质水凝胶的制备,并证明它们在两项正交基础研究中的实用性-光捕获和白光发射。我们的水凝胶含有高达90%的水,同时也可以用注射器独立注射。在一个应用中,我们用合适的有机供体-受体染料加载这些水凝胶,并证明了四种不同染料之间的能量转移级联,以最红色的染料作为能量目的地。我们假设染料作为单体实体嵌入远离水池的蛋白质/脂质相中,并且四种染料中的任何一种的激发都会导致最低能量受体的强烈发射。与能量转移级联相反,我们展示了使用这些凝胶来形成发白光的水凝胶染料组件,其中激励迁移受到严重约束。通过限制染料到染料的能量转移,蓝色,绿色,和红色染料在各自的波长发射,从而产生复合白光发射。发射的CIE颜色坐标为0.336和0.339-几乎是纯的白光发射。因此,两个具有相反要求的相关研究可以容纳在同一个水凝胶中,它是通过一种简单的方法由可食用的成分制成的。这些凝胶在释放到环境中时是可生物降解的,可持续,并且可能对能量应用感兴趣。
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.