This Is the Brightest Known Material in Existence
Chemists have utilized positively charged fluorescent dyes to create SMILES, which can become the brightest known material in existence.
Fluorescent light.
From swirly lightbulbs to long tubes lighting up hallways, fluorescent light can be found everywhere we go. Its ability to produce 75% less heat than traditional incandescent lightbulbs make it energy-efficient and cost-effective. Additionally, its important role in everything from medical biomarkers to solar technology has made these types of light sources widespread.
Despite their wide implementation, these materials have faced a 150-year-old struggle when it comes to transferring their physical and chemical properties from a liquid solution to a solid, limiting fluorescents’ overall use. Recently, however, American and Danish chemists have discovered a new class of materials in a study that could put this century-and-a-half challenge to an end.
These are SMILES (small-molecule ionic isolation lattices), made by using positively charged fluorescent dyes whose glow can be seamlessly shifted to a solid-state. They can later be formed into shapes like the gyroids shown here.
The constant barrier to creating fluorescent solids has been broken down, resulting in the brightest materials ever in existence, claims the study published in the scientific journal Chem.
Amar Flood, a chemist at Indiana University and co-senior author of the study, even says,
“These materials have potential applications in any technology that needs bright fluorescence or calls for designing optical properties, including solar energy harvesting, bioimaging, and lasers.”
How Were They Made?
Although I mentioned earlier that SMILES is made using positively charged fluorescent dyes that can be shifted to a solid-state, the full process is bit more complex.
One of the problems involved in converting fluorescents’ properties is quenching, the decrease of fluorescence when multiple dyes are combined to form a solid. This is because they can’t help but interact with each other, Amar Flood explains.
“The problem of quenching and inter-dye coupling emerges when the dyes stand shoulder-to-shoulder inside solids. They cannot help but ‘touch’ each other. Like young children sitting at storytime, they interfere with each other and stop behaving as individuals.”
To fix this problem, chemists used a shape-persistent, colorless molecule called a cyanostar (shown here).
These molecules can add structure to these hyperactive dyes, maintaining their optical qualities and allowing them to transform into lattices of separated molecules. The team of chemists in this study later dubbed these lattices SMILES as an acronym.
These SMILES are later grown into crystals and transformed into a powder. This powder is then spun into a film and directly integrated into a polymer (a molecule made from joining together many small molecules called monomers, e.g. polyethylene plastic).
The polymers are later used to print 3D objects like the lattice cages shown above. The chemists found that the dyes not only maintained their optical properties in solid form but also became the brightest materials known in existence.
“We also do not know the materials’ limits,”
says Amar Flood. SMILES have only been discovered recently, so we only know about potential applications right now. However, the future is bright for SMILES (pun intended), with many possibilities.
Are They Really the ‘Brightest Materials in Existence’?
Amar Flood and co-author of the study Bo Laursen say that this is more of a technicality — it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll appear bright to our eyes, specifically. They explained to Inverse,
“Since fluorescence is reemission of absorbed light the perceived brightness (by human eyes) will depend on our perception of the light used to excite the material.
Fluorescence can be extremely bright when only UV light is used, in that case, the material appears as a true intrinsic light source (since human eyes cannot detect UV light).”
However, the achievements of SMILES technology are still nothing to scoff at.
First of all, SMILES was successfully used with multiple commercialized dyes without needing extra adjustments, which would be helpful to researchers handling a wide range of these dyes.
Additionally, when compared to a material with similar fluorescent properties, which in this case are cadmium selenide quantum dots (uses range from medical diagnosis to LEDs), SMILES was 30 times brighter.
Even though SMILES is only technically the brightest material in existence, the potential applications it has for society could change the world.
Why Does This Matter?
We can see that SMILES is certainly something that can help the world, but how? How can this concept help lives around the world, along with the environment?
They could increase the capture of solar energy in solar panels.
The solar spectrum includes multiple types of light, including ultraviolet (UV), infrared, and visible light.
If SMILES were to become more advanced, it could optimize solar panels to broaden their energy production across the solar spectrum. This could end up generating more energy, and more people would be encouraged to use this renewable energy.
They could improve fluorescent probes for bioimaging research.
Fluorescent probes have become essential tools in modern biology because they provide diverse information concerning the location and amount of the molecules of scientists’ interest without the need for genetic engineering.
The possible utilization of SMILES in bioimaging could result in brighter, sharper, and more navigable images. Locating and identifying molecules could become much easier, paving the way for more advanced biological research.
SMILES have only been developed recently, so it hasn’t been utilized in anything yet. We can only think of potential applications of these materials like the ones I stated earlier. The future of SMILES is bright, but Amar Flood says we are still learning more and more about this interesting phenomenon.
“These materials are totally new, so we do not know which of their innate properties are actually going to offer superior functionality. So, we will develop a fundamental understanding of how they work, providing a robust set of design rules for making new properties.
This is critical for putting these materials into the hands of others–we want to pursue crowd sourcing and to work with others in this effort.”
I believe SMILES have great potential in the future. Although they are an amazing discovery, we still have more work to do. As we learn more about SMILES, though, they could help the world become a cleaner and healthier place.
The line between chemistry and technology is being challenged, and the advancements we can make in the future can certainly change the fields of biology, chemistry, and engineering forever.
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