Continuous intra- and intermolecular energy transfer in light-harvesting gels from natural amino acids-based dendrons

The gels and co-gels from glycine (Gly) and glutamic acid (Glu)-based dendrons with either tyrosine (Tyr) or tryptophan (Trp), two of the luminescent amino acid residues in natural proteins, at the focal point were prepared (Tyr-AB4 and Trp-AB4). It was found that such gels, especially the co-gels from Tyr-AB4/Trp-AB4, showed a high efficient energy transfer (ET) and light-harvesting behaviors. Moreover, luminescent gels with tunable emission ranging from blue to green were also observed owing to the cascade intra- and intermolecular ET from dendritic gelators to the guest molecules (PDNS) in the host–guest gel sample (co-gel with PDNS as the guest molecule), which mimicked the natural light-harvesting systems.