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 step-wise energy transfer nanohybrid system which 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 (MoSe2). A Si/SiO2 based field effect transistor incorporating the biotic/abiotic nano hybrid was demonstrated to exhibi...