Multifunctional porous microspheres based on peptide-porphyrin hierarchical co-assembly

Photocatalytically active, multi-chambered, biomolecule-based microspheres were prepared by hierarchical co-assembly of simple dipeptides and porphyrins. The colloidal microspheres are highly hydrated and consist of a network of J-aggregate nanoscale substructures that serve as light-harvesting antennae with a relatively broad spectral cross-section and considerable photostability. These optical properties can be exploited in photocatalytic reactions involving inorganic or organic species. Taken together, these structural and functional features suggest that soft porous biomolecule-based colloids are a plausible photosynthetic model that could be developed towards demonstrating aspects of primitive abiotic cellularity.