A new hybrid material with dual UV/vis light-harvesting ability has been prepared based on PM546 dye confined in zeolite L nanochannels. Besides the characteristic vis green-yellow absorption of the dye in solution, a new band arises due to specific host−guest interactions, spanning the UV and blue edge of the vis. A chemical reaction takes place between the PM546 and acid protons from the zeolite, removing a fluorine atom from the BODIPY and giving rise to the new hypsochromic absorption. As result, a single dye presents light absorption at two different wavelengths, as well as a broad fluorescence emission, which covers a wide part of the vis region through a FRET process.
Different laser dyes (with special interest in boron dipyrromethene) are incorporated as guests into the channels of zeolite L. The resulting doped material is fully characterized by steady‐state and time‐resolved photophysical techniques. The pores of zeolite L are filled with high amounts of dyes, which are exclusively present in their monomeric form and aligned in a preferential orientation, thus generating an organized photoactive material. The ordered disposition of the dye, mostly along the direction of the zeolite L nanochannels, was confirmed by confocal fluorescence microscopy. A careful selection of fluorophores along with controlled loading allows the harvest of light from the entire ultraviolet/visible region for conversion into white light, or alternatively, tuning of the emission in the blue, green, and red regions, owing to the presence of energy‐transfer processes in the antenna systems built up in this work.
Boosted excitation energy transfer in spiranic O-BODIPY/polyarene cassettes, when compared with the parent non-spiranic (flexible) system, is highlighted as a proof for the ability of a new structural design to improve the energy transfer in molecular cassettes.
Hybrid soft materials composed of CdSe-CdS nanorods or "quantum rods" (QRs) and the fluorescent 2,3-didecyloxyanthracene (DDOA) low molecular weight organogelator are obtained through self-assembly. Spectroscopy, microscopy, and rheology studies show that the QRs and DDOA coassemble, thereby stabilizing the organogels. Depending on the QR load and excitation wavelength, single nanofibers (NFs) of the hybrid gel display either sharp polarized red luminescence (under green excitation), or dual perpendicularly polarized blue and red emissions (under UV excitation). Transmission electron microscopy, microspectroscopy, and quantum rod orientation microscopy (QROM) reveal that QRs align along the organogel NFs with order parameters reaching 76% and 87%. This paves the way for obtaining surfaces of QR/NF assemblies yielding sharp red linearly polarized emission. In addition, this work demonstrates that QRs can be used more generally to probe nanostructured soft materials, even nonemissive ones. QROM allows to establish maps of the orientation of single QRs dispersed onto or within a gel network by measuring the polarization of the emission of the individual QRs. As occurs within this work in which QRs and NFs interact, the orientation of each QR reveals information on the underlying nanostructure (such as surface striation, bundle formation, and helicity).
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