Trichromophore-doped cassava-based biopolymer as low-cost and eco-friendly luminous material for bio hybrid white-light-emitting diodes by dual-FRET process

• Published in: Optical materials 2019-09, Vol.95, p.109270, Article 109270
• Main Authors: Reddy Mallem, Siva Pratap, Im, Ki-Sik, Lee, Jung-Hee, Park, Chinho, Bathalavaram, Poornaprakash
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bio-LEDs; Cassava; Chromophore; Dual-FRET; Quenching effect
• ISSN: 0925-3467; 1873-1252
• DOI: 10.1016/j.optmat.2019.109270

White-light-emitting diodes (WLEDs) are promoted as environmentally friendly because they are energy saving-features and mercury-free aspects, but, rare-earth-free, metal-free, cost-competitive, and eco-friendly for brighter WLEDs are attractive but quite challenging in practice. This paper reports a new methodology using biopolymer luminous material in bio hybrid white-light-emitting diodes (Bio-HWLEDs) based on a trichromophore-doped cassava crystalline thick film that emits bright white light emission through a dual Fӧrster resonance energy transfer (FRET) process. The dual-FRET takes place from coumarin to sulforhodamine via the curcumin chromophore. The Bio-HWLED showed color co-ordinates (0.33, 0.32) that exactly matched with pure white light emission. The effect of temperature on luminescence and the activation energy for thermal quenching were determined using the temperature-dependent photoluminescence measurements. Moreover, Bio-HWLED showed a low luminous drop rate of 0.00069 s−1 to overcome the aggregation-induced quenching effect. These results pave the way towards the realization of commercially viable, large-scale and high-contrast bio hybrid light applications that are environmentally friendly. •Efficient trichromophore-doped cassava-based biopolymer based material is proposed.•Low-cost and eco-friendly Bio-HWLED is fabricated.•The Bio-HWLED parameters are investigated by L-I measurements.•Luminous drop rate overcome by the aggregation-induced quenching effect.