以自组装环肽为构筑基元的超分子人工光捕获体系

为了实现对光能这一清洁可持续能源的有效利用，受自然界光合作用过程的启发，近年来人们一直致力于构筑人工光捕获体系。在构筑水相人工光捕获体系时，疏水荧光基团的分子内荧光自淬灭是普遍存在的问题。尽管研究者们已经发展了若干抑制荧光淬灭的有效策略，但目前这些策略仍存在一定的局限性。基于此，本项目从组装体结构出发，旨在建立并发展一种更为普适的超分子策略。以基于自组装环肽的刷状超分子聚合物为超分子框架，本项目拟通过探究给/受体荧光基团的物化性质和空间分布对光捕获性能的影响规律，对该类人工光捕获体系进行优化。接着，本项目计划设计构筑具有连续多次能量转移过程的人工光捕获体系，以期实现对光能更全面的捕获。最后，本项目还将引入具有光敏化/光催化活性的功能基团，探索功能光捕获体系的构筑，将人工光捕获与光化学转换有效结合，推动人工模拟光合作用的发展。

Inspired by the natural photosynthetic process, researchers have been devoted to construct artificial light-harvesting systems (ALHSs) to make efficient utilization of the clean and sustainable light energy. The undesired aggregation-caused quenching effect of the hydrophobic fluorophores is a common issue when building ALHSs in water. While certain effective strategies have been raised to solve this issue, limitations still exist. Hence, from the aspect of self-assembling structures, this project is aimed to develop a more generalized supramolecular strategy. Using supramolecular brush polymers based on self-assembling cyclic peptides as the supramolecular scaffold, we plan to reveal the effect of the physicochemical properties and spatial arrangements of the donor/acceptor fluorophores on the performance of the systems, which will eventually lead to the optimization of the cyclic peptide-based ALHSs. Furthermore, we will explore the possibility of fabricating an ALHS with a multi-step sequential energy transfer process for a better harvest of light energy. At last, we will construct several functional ALHSs by the introduction of functional fluorophores with photosensitizing/photocatalytic properties to integrate light-harvesting and photochemical conversion, which will surely advance the research towards mimicking the natural photosynthesis.