Bringing heat into the bright side in bio-hybrid LEDs – Heat-BLED

The main objective of Heat-BLED is the development of new biophosphors able to either stand high photon flux excitations without generating heat or to smartly use the heat in dual functional devices. Heat-BLED will provide experimental insight into the interaction of polymer-fluorescence protein matrix with light and most importantly, provide a solid experimental basis to determine optimum composition of the matrix to effectively reduce heat generation. This will be accomplished by establishing a protocol to quantify the dielectric loss heating under device operating conditions. Moreover, the second approach will be applied to design an innovative family of color down-converting coatings for Bio-hybrid light emitting diodes (Bio-HLED) that repurposes the heat generated under operando conditions. To this end, two strategies will be used. Firstly, the fluorescent protein will be covalently linked to a nanothermometer. Second, a multi-layered biophosphor coating will be fabricated using a transparent thermoelectric generator to convert heat into an electricity.