ARTIBLED has proposed a three-step innovative approach to forge new artificial fluorescent proteins (AFPs) to enhance Bio-WLEDs meeting the technology needs for lighting. This project realized by a highly interdisciplinary consortium comprising experts in Synthetic Biology, Organic Chemistry, Biocomputational, Theory, Photophysics, Hybrid Optoelectronics, and Industrial Bio-technology. CICbiomaGUNE has genetically modified protein scaffolds, while the UNITO has focused on the synthesis of new LED emitters. They were supported by TU Graz/CSIC for theoretical and computation simulations and TUM for spectroscopic measurements and coating fabrication. TUM has taken over device fabrication and optimization, while ABIEL has focused on the upscale production of proteins. As such, the first steps of ARTIBLED was focused on designing suitable LED emitters and protein scaffolds using synthesis, spectroscopic and computational tools. Two family of emitters were investigated achieving photoluminescence quantum yields >80% and >40 % for green and red emitters, respectively. The photo-induced degradation in polymer matrices was fully studied, identifiying several suitable proteins-polymer combinations. Out of this efforts, UNITO/TUM/CSIC has explored up to 80 candidates selected in terms of photoluminescence quantum yields and photostabilities, while CIC/TUGraz/CSIC have designed a robust computational approach to redefine the protein scaffolds to host a variety of LED emitters reaching high photostabilities and no loss of the photoluminescence quantum yield. Overall, this resulted in devices meeting the expectations in terms of photostabilities (>1500 h). Finally, UNITO/ABIEL estabslihed with the up-scaling studies of LED emitters and protein scaffolds,reaching a 98 % reduction cost of the protein.
