Amyloid Directed Synthesis of Titanium Dioxide Nanowires and Their Applications in Hybrid Photovoltaic Devices

This paper reports β ‐lactoglobulin amyloid protein fibrils directed synthesis of Titanium Dioxide (TiO 2 ) hybrid nanowires. Protein fibrils act as templates to generate closely packed TiO 2 nanoparticles on the surface of the fibrils using titanium (IV) bis (ammonium lactato) dihydroxide (TiBALDH) as precursor, resulting in the TiO 2 –coated amyloid hybrid nanowires. These amyloid fibrils also exhibit complexation with a luminescent water‐soluble semiconductive polythiophene (P3HT). TiO 2 nanowires behave as electron acceptor while, P3HT as electron donor. In this way, amyloid‐TiO 2 hybrid nanowires can serve in heterojunction photovoltaic devices. To demonstrate this, a photovoltaic active layer is prepared by spin coating the blended mixture of polythiophene‐coated fibrils and amyloid‐TiO 2 hybrid nanowires. The current–voltage characteristics of these photovoltaic devices exhibit excellent fill factor of 0.53, photovoltaic current density of 3.97 mA·cm −2 and power conversion efficiency of 0.72%, highlighting a possible future role for amyloid‐based templates in donor–acceptor devices, organic electronics and hybrid solar cells.