Together with our friends of U. Aalto (Prof. Mauri and Dr. Anaya-Plaza) we have reported our first steps toward designing bioinspired materials to convert sunlight into electricity following the green photonic philosophy. Although we showed that fluorescent proteins are promising candidates as photoactive materials, the development of artificial bioinspired photosynthetic systems requires a detailed understanding of molecular interactions and energy transfer mechanisms in the required operating conditions. Here, the electrostatically driven supramolecular self‐assembly of positively supercharged fluorescent proteins with anionic zinc phthalocyanines having 4 or 16 carboxylate groups results in an efficient energy transfer process from the protein to the phthalocyanine, anticipating their applicability as water-based photoactive materials.
Enjoy the read here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adbi.202400308