Efficient Energy Transfer within Self-Assembling Peptide Fibers: A Route to Light-Harvesting Nanomaterials

Small peptides offer an attractive starting point for the development of self-assembling materials for a variety of purposes, since they are relatively simple to produce and can be tailored to provide an expansive range of chemical functionality. We have employed a short peptide that spontaneously self-assembles into a multimolecular fibrillar architecture to drive the coassembly of two independent luminescent moieties. We use fluorescence spectroscopy to demonstrate that the resulting complex performs a light-harvesting function.