Supramolecular Self-assembly of Chlorins in an Aerosolized Droplet to Synthesize Biomimetic Antennas

摘要

Natural light harvesting organisms have evolved to harvest sunlight efficiently. Green sulfur bacteria, which contain chlorosomes, can survive in extremely low light conditions mainly because of efficient light absorption and transfer of energy, facilitated by the assembled dye molecules. Due to these reasons, chlorosomes have been used in dye sensitized solar cells to improve the light absorption and performance. The chlorosome absorption spectrum is fixed and their size is dependent on the organism. Various solution-based techniques have been developed for synthesizing mimics by supramolecular self-assembly. However, controlling the size of agglomerates and their subsequent deposition on surfaces to fabricate a device is difficult. In this work, a one-step aerosol-based self-assembly technique has been developed for the first time, to assemble and deposit chlorin (Bacteria chlorophyll mimics) agglomerates. A shift in absorption spectra of 79 nm which is comparable to the natural system was obtained. The analysis shows that kinetics of nucleation play an important role in assembly.