Flexible Organic Crystals for Light Delivery in Biological Tissues

Optically transmissive materials are indispensable for the transmission of light or light-encoded signals in telecommunications and optobiomedical techniques.Here, we propose that slender crystals of small organic molecules can be used as optically transparent, flexible, lightweight, and emissive media to deliver photons into or through biological tissues as an alternative to silica-or polymer-based light waveguides.We demonstrate that organic crystals remain transmissive in various porcine tissues, and their efficiency in light transduction depends on the intrinsic optical properties of the crystal, optical path, geometry of excitation, Page 1 of 28 CCS Chemistry