Long-living and highly efficient bio-hybrid light-emitting diodes with zero-thermal-quenching biophosphors

Abstract

Bio-hybrid light-emitting diodes (Bio-HLEDs) based on color down-converting filters with fluorescent proteins (FPs) have achieved moderate efficiencies (50 lm/W) and stabilities (300 h) due to both thermal-and photo-degradation. Here, we present a significant enhancement in efficiency (~130 lm/W) and stability (>150 days) using a zero-thermalquenching bio-phosphor design. This is achieved shielding the FP surface with a hydrophilic polymer allowing their homogenous integration into the network of a light-guiding and hydrophobic host polymer. We rationalize how the control of the mechanical and optical features of this bio-phosphor is paramount towards highly stable and efficient Bio-HLEDs, regardless of the operation conditions. This is validated by the relationships between the stiffness of the FP-polymer phosphor and the maximum temperature reached under device operation as well as the transmittance of the filters and device efficiency.

Designing Artificial Fluorescent Proteins: Squaraine‐LmrR Biophosphors for High Performance Deep‐Red Biohybrid Light‐Emitting Diodes

“…In view of these results, this work paves the way for the use of ad hoc designed AFPs for lighting applications. While a few examples of devices using natural [ 29,35–37 ] and engineered FPs [ 38,56 ] in both, artificial and biogenic matrices, have recently been reported, [ 9,14 ] this work is a landmark showing that the combination of artificial emitters with selected protein scaffolds represents a promising approach to tackle the limitation of poor emissive FPs toward highly performing deep‐red Bio‐HLEDs.…”

“…[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] Though this field started at the beginning of the 21 st century, several recent advances have set in their relevance. Among them, new efficient and stable OPs, such as iridium(III) complexes-silica nanoparticles, [24] benzodiimidazole-based systems for green HLEDs, [25] stable perovskitebased filters, [26,27] and biophosphors implementing biogenic components [28,29] stand out compared to the prior art. Indeed, BASF has launched a new series of HLED lamp systems based on the Sunvue technology.…”

“…[28,34,35] Enhancing the polymer matrix has led to Bio-HLEDs with stabilities >150 days at ≈130 lm W −1 . [29] Several groups have further developed Bio-HLEDs employing different natural [36,37] and artificial FPs (AFPs). [31,38,39] Finally, fully biogenic phosphors, in which both the packaging matrix and the emitter are of biological origin (e.g., silk fibroin (SF) as packaging matrix and FPs as emitters) have been recently reported, [40] achieving efficiencies of 40 lm W −1 and stabilities of 1.2 and 500 h (200 mA) for on chip and remote configurations, respectively.…”

Biogenic fluorescent protein–silk fibroin phosphors for high performing light-emitting diodes

“…This leads to Bio-HLEDs with enhanced stabilities of 1.2 h (on chip) and 4500 h (remote) operating at high applied currents of 200 mA compared to those using FP-polymer as bio-phosphors -e.g., 1.8 min (on-chip) and o300 h (remote). It is noteworthy that the device performance of this novel class of fully biogenic phosphor-based Bio-HLEDs stands out among other Bio-HLEDs based on biogenic matrices embedding artificial emitters 43,50,51,80,81 and biogenic emitters in MOFs, 41,42 polymers, [33][34][35][36]39,40,47,82 and dry films 48,49,53 as summarized in Table S1 (ESI †).…”

“…This is related to (i) their negative ecological impact, i.e., mining, lack of recycling, and use of toxic elements, 27,28 and (ii) the visual and non-visual health effects under long exposure to blue light -i.e., irreversible damage of photoreceptors in young children and elderly people along with the alteration of the natural biorhythm of the body (circadian rhythm). [29][30][31][32] To date, there are two types of bio-phosphors, namely (i) biogenic emitters like FPs stabilized in polymer matrices (FP-polymer) [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40] and metal organic frameworks (FP-MOF) 41,42 and (ii) artificial emitters stabilized in biogenic matrices like DNA, 43 proteins, 24,[44][45][46][47][48][49] polysaccharides, [50][51][52] and cellulose. 50,51,53 Table S1 (ESI †) summarizes the most important figures of merit of these contributions.…”