EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

Bio-phosphors have emerged as an alternative to rare-earth color down-converting filters in light-emitting diodes (LEDs). They are mainly produced with biogenic emitters, like Fluorescent Proteins (FPs), embedded in polymer matrices.[1–3] The first bio-hybrid LED (Bio-HLED) with FP-phosphors featured a loss <10% of the emission intensity after 100 h.1 This performance was recently enhanced using zero-thermal quenching PMMA-FP phosphors, reaching >150 days and 5 min of stability at low and high powers.[4] However, the ideal combination of highly efficient and stable fully biogenic phosphors is still in its infancy.[5] Here, we disclose the optimization of a new biopolymer hosting a stable eGFP mutant as green-emitting phosphor in Bio-HLEDs. The remarkable photoluminescent properties of the bio-phosphors - Φ> 70% - lead to Bio-HLEDs with excellent photo-stabilities > 230 h operating under high powers, representing 2 orders of magnitude enhancement. We are strongly convinced that our work represents a crucial breakthrough in the development of in toto bio-phosphors.

[1] Weber, M. D. et al. Bioinspired Hybrid White Light-Emitting Diodes. Adv. Mater. 27, 5493–5498 (2015).
[2] Fernández‐Luna, V. et al. Deciphering Limitations to Meet Highly Stable Bio‐Hybrid Light‐Emitting Diodes. Adv. Funct. Mater. 29, 1904356 (2019).
[3] Aguino, C. F. et al. Single-Component Biohybrid Light-Emitting Diodes Using a White-Emitting Fused Protein. ACS Omega 3, 15829–15836 (2018).
[4] Espasa, A. et al. Long-living and Highly Efficient Bio-hybrid Light-emitting Diodes with Zero-thermal-Quenching Biophosphors. Nat. Commun. 11, 1–10 (2020).
[5] Fernández-Luna, V. et al. Biogenic Fluorescent Protein-silk Fibroin Phosphors for High Performing Light-emitting Diodes. Mater. Horizons 7, 1790–1800 (2020).