New artificial light-harvesting system using organic nanotubes useful for solar cells, photocatalysis, optical sensors & tunable multi-color light emitting materials

Source: The post is based on the article “New artificial light-harvesting system using organic nanotubes useful for solar cells, photocatalysis, optical sensors & tunable multi-color light emitting materials” published in the PIB on 24th May 2023

What is the News?

Researchers have developed a new method of harvesting artificial light using organic nanotubes.

What led to the development of an artificial light-harvesting system?

In nature, plants and photosynthetic bacteria capture sunlight and deliver it to the reaction centre through a cascade of energy and electron transfer steps for its eventual storage in the form of chemical energy. The antenna chromophores in the light-harvesting complexes are precisely aligned into arrays by the surrounding proteins. This in turn allows the energy migration between them in a highly efficient manner.

Mimicking natural photosynthetic systems and understanding the fundamental processes of energy transfer has gained enormous interest, especially for systems that need energy conversion and storage.

About the artificial light-harvesting system 

Two Indian scientists carried out experimental and computational investigations on artificial light-harvesting in organic nanotubes derived from the union of an organic fluorescent molecule and a therapeutically important biopolymer. During their experiment, they formed nanotubes with bright greenish-yellow emission.

Just like the antenna chromophores or pigmented (coloured) membrane-associated vesicles used to perform photosynthesis in bacteria. The nanotubes acted as highly efficient energy donors (antennae) in a system that mimicked the natural photosynthetic process.

Applications: The energy transfer phenomenon demonstrated in this study is known as FRET (Förster resonance energy transfer), which has significant importance in different applications. Such as determination of DNA/RNA structures, mapping biological membranes, real-time PCR tests, and so on.

Further, this can be utilized in solar cells, photocatalysis, optical sensors, and tunable multi-color light-emitting materials.