Stimulated Emission from Rhodamine 6G Aggregates Self-Assembled on Amyloid Protein Fibrils
Journal article, 2015

Amyloid fibrils are excellent bioderived nanotemplates for controlling molecular and optical properties of small molecules such as organic dyes. Here we demonstrate that two representative fibril-forming proteins, lysozyme and insulin, from the amyloids family can determine the optical signature of rhodamine 6G. Their structural variety leads to a unique molecular arrangement of dye aggregates on the biotemplate surface. This significantly influences the light amplification threshold as well as the stimulated emission profiles, which show remarkable broadband wavelength tunability. We show in addition that amyloid fibrils can be potentially used in constructing broadband emission biolasers.

biolaser

nanotemplates

lysozyme and insulin proteins

rhodamine 6G

amyloid fibrils

laser dye

biomaterial

molecular crowding

random lasing

stimulated emission

Author

Piotr Hanczyc

University of California at Santa Barbara

L. Sznitko

Wrocław University of Science and Technology

C. J. Zhong

University of California at Santa Barbara

A.J. Heeger

University of California at Santa Barbara

ACS Photonics

2330-4022 (eISSN)

Vol. 2 12 1755-1762

Areas of Advance

Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (SO 2010-2017, EI 2018-)

Life Science Engineering (2010-2018)

Materials Science

Subject Categories

Physical Chemistry

Atom and Molecular Physics and Optics

Materials Chemistry

Biophysics

Organic Chemistry

DOI

10.1021/acsphotonics.5b00458

More information

Latest update

7/10/2019