Amino-Acid-Mediated Biomimetic Formation of Light-Harvesting Antenna Capable of Hydrogen Evolution

The control of materials concerning size as well as high-order organization may have profound implications for a wide variety of technologies. Herein, we develop a facile strategy to fabricate hierarchically organized amino acid and quantum dot (QD) biomimetic light-harvesting antenna via the integration of coordination-driven self-assembly and bioinspired mineralization. Simplified from phytochelatins, cystine is used as a chelating agent to bind cadmium ions (Cd2+). This coordination interaction further drives the self-assembly of cystine into hierarchical hybrid crystals. The hybrid templates can provide ordered sites for in situ mineralization of cadmium sulfide (CdS) to generate hierarchical three-dimensional QDs architectures. Optimal light harvesting properties are obtained by controlling the mineralization conditions, which facilitates photocatalytic hydrogen (H2) evolution. In addition, the CdS QDs architectures possess sustainable photocatalytic performance because of robust assembled structures, rendering them potent candidates for optoelectronic applications