Journal
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Volume 5, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5236
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Funding
- European Commission (ERC) [247330]
- Fundacio CELLEX (Barcelona)
- MINECO [FIS2012-35527]
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
- Marie-Curie International Fellowship COFUND
- ICFOnest programme
- ICREA Funding Source: Custom
- BBSRC [BB/J008230/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council [BB/J008230/1] Funding Source: researchfish
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The nature of the highly efficient energy transfer in photosynthetic light-harvesting complexes is a subject of intense research. Unfortunately, the low fluorescence efficiency and limited photostability hampers the study of individual light-harvesting complexes at ambient conditions. Here we demonstrate an over 500-fold fluorescence enhancement of light-harvesting complex 2 (LH2) at the single-molecule level by coupling to a gold nanoantenna. The resonant antenna produces an excitation enhancement of circa 100 times and a fluorescence lifetime shortening to similar to 20 ps. The radiative rate enhancement results in a 5.5-fold-improved fluorescence quantum efficiency. Exploiting the unique brightness, we have recorded the first photon antibunching of a single light-harvesting complex under ambient conditions, showing that the 27 bacteriochlorophylls coordinated by LH2 act as a non-classical single-photon emitter. The presented bright antenna-enhanced LH2 emission is a highly promising system to study energy transfer and the role of quantum coherence at the level of single complexes.
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