Seeking brightness from natural resources: Soy protein isolate and its multifunctional applications

Unconventional luminescent materials that without large conjugate structures have caused extensive attention due to the importance of their theoretical research and potential application prospects. In this work, untraditional aggregation-induced emission (AIE) with clustering-triggered emission (CTE) mechanism from natural source, soy protein isolate (SPI) was found. SPI has excellent water solubility, good biocompatibility, easy degradability and can be mass manufactured. Moreover, room temperature phosphorescence (RTP) in SPI powders also be found, which is also unusual in organic emitters. In addition, SPI can be used as a biosensor and a fluorescent probe for multi-channel imaging. The results all indicted that SPI can be as a novel type of AIE material which have broad application prospects.

Automated summary

Soy protein isolate (SPI) as an unconventional luminescent material, has excellent properties and potential broad application prospects, including AIE and CTE mechanisms, room temperature phosphorescence, which can be used in biosensors and multi-channel imaging.