Science Daily January 31, 2023
Photosynthesis in plants and some bacteria relies on light-harvesting (LH) supramolecules which come in different structures. So far, these LH molecules have not been artificially prepared. Researchers in Japan demonstrated that mixing a chlorophyll derivative with naphthalenediamide in an organic solvent leads to the formation of dimers that spontaneously self-assembled into ring-shaped structures, each several hundred nanometers in diameter. They observed that chlorophyll dimers, molecules composed of two chlorophyll units linked by naphthalene, initially self-assembled into stable wavy nanofibers. Upon heating these nanofibers at 50°C, they disassembled into smaller nanoring precursors whose ends eventually joined together to form the desired nanorings. Their findings could help in studying artificial photosynthesis and possibly pave the way for novel materials for LH devices like solar cells…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
AFM images of assembled dimer … Credit: Chem. Commun., 2023, Advance Article