Enhanced fluorescence of photosynthetic pigments through conjugation with carbon quantum dots
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Enhanced fluorescence of photosynthetic pigments through conjugation with carbon quantum dots Esranur Budak1 · Duğçar Erdoğan2 · Caner Ünlü1,2,3 Received: 29 May 2020 / Accepted: 29 September 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Light harvesting in photosynthesis is currently an issue on-debate and studied widely in all over the world. Studies on light harvesting mainly focus on enlightening molecular mechanism of the process and enhancing absorption capacity of light harvesting complexes (LHCs). Enhancement of absorption capacity of LHCs can be done either by natural methods or by synthetic methods. Quantum dots (QDs), fluorescent semiconductor nanocrystals, are important constituents of inorganic– organic hybrid structures which are built to enhance absorption capacity of LHCs through synthetic methods. In this study, we synthesized carbon and heteroatom doped carbon QDs through a microwave assisted synthesis method. Each QD had unique photophysical and structural properties. Photosynthetic pigments (PP) (isolated from spinach leaves) were mixed with each QD separately to build a QD–PP hybrid structure. Our results revealed that significant amount of energy is transferred from carbon QDs to PPs and therefore chlorophyll fluorescence capacity of PPs enhanced significantly in 360–420 nm excitation wavelength interval. Our results suggested that non-toxic, inexpensive and easily synthesized carbon QDs can be an important constituent for hybrid structures to enhance absorption capacity of LHCs in highly energetic region of visible spectrum. Keywords Quantum dots · Carbon · Light harvesting · Energy transfer · Heteroatom doped carbon quantum dots
Introduction Quantum dots (QDs) are versatile fluorescent, semiconductor nanocrystals with unique photophysical properties, such as high quantum yield, high photostability, broad absorption spectrum and narrow emission bands (Bawendi et al. 1992; Alivisatos 1996; Michalet et al. 2005). QDs have become a one of the most important materials in biotechnology and widely used in energy transfer studies (Clapp et al. 2005; Dayal et al. 2006; Medintz et al. 2009; Britton et al. 2010), Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11120-020-00786-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Caner Ünlü [email protected] 1
Department of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering, Istanbul Technical University, Maslak, 34469 Istanbul, Turkey
2
Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Letters, Istanbul Technical University, Maslak, 34469 Istanbul, Turkey
3
Istanbul Technical University Nanotechnology Research and Application Center (ITUnano), Istanbul, Turkey
protein tracking studies (Xu et al. 2016) and in vivo and in vitro imaging studies (Dubertret et al. 2002; Larson et al. 2003; Li et al. 2016). With their unique photophysical properties, QDs are potential candidates as energy donors and acceptors in organic–inorganic hybrid structures (Clapp et al. 2004, 20
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