Efficient Light Harvesting Biotic–Abiotic Nanohybrid System Incorporating Atomically Thin van der Waals Transition Metal Dichalcogenides

Inspired by nature’s light harvesting complex architectures, which bring together, in one unit, several active nanocomponents to harvest light and to flow the harvested energy in precise directions and places, we designed and assembled a biotic/abiotic stepwise energy transfer nanohybrid system that is based on an atomically thin, two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals semiconductor, colloidal quantum dots, and a light harvesting protein. We utilized the van der Waals semiconductor as a 2D platform for bottom-up assembly, connecting nanocomponents via electrostatic self-assembly and layer-by-layer polyelectrolyte deposition. Through bandgap engineering of the self-assembled active components, we created conditions for efficient directional stepwise energy transfer, from optically excited quantum dots, to proteins and finally to the 2D van der Waals semiconductor, here molybdenum diselenide (MoSe 2 ). A field effect transistor incorporating the biotic/abiotic nanohybrid was demonstrated to exhibit enhanced spectral responsivity when compared to the pristine device (2D van der Waals semiconductor only). This is because the biotic/abiotic nanohybrid exhibits enhanced absorption cross section and enhanced light harvesting through the addition of quantum dots and proteins next to MoSe 2, which in turn leads to enhanced exciton generation in MoSe 2 via energy transfer from quantum dots to proteins and finally to MoSe 2 .