Increased Transfer Efficiency from Molecular Photonic Wires on Solid Substrates and Cryogenic Conditions

Molecular photonic wires (MPWs) are tunable nanophotonic structures capable of capturing and directing light with high transfer efficiencies. DNA-based assembly techniques provide a simple and economical preparation method for MPWs that allows precise positioning of the molecular transfer components. Unfortunately, the longest DNA-based MPWs (∼30 nm) report only modest transfer efficiencies of ∼2% and have not been demonstrated on solid-state platforms. Here, we demonstrate that DNA-based MPWs can be spin-coated in a polymer matrix onto silicon wafers and exhibit a 5-fold increase in photonic transfer efficiency over solution-phase MPWs. Cooling these MPWs to 5 K led to further efficiency increases ranging from ∼40 to 240% depending on the length of the MPW. The improvement of MPW energy transport efficiencies advances prospects for their incorporation in a variety of optoelectronics technologies and makes them an ideal test bed for further exploration of nanoscale energy transfer.