What are SMILES?
SMILES are the brightest fluorescent materials ever made
SMILES are “small molecule, ionic isolation lattices” that display programmable super-bright emission.
SMILES materials are made of fluorescent dyes (blue) packed together in high densities that solve a long-standing problem called self-quenching. The quenching comes from a collection of phenomena that emerge when dyes pack closely together and lose they their ability to em
SMILES solves the problem of self-quenching by isolating the dyes from each other in a high-density checker-board lattice.
Preparing SMILES
SMILES are a platform material.
SMILES are plug-and-play material. All of the major commercial dyes (rhodamines, cyanines, xanthenes, styryls, trianguleniums) produce bright fluorescence in the solid state.
SMILES are simple to make by mixing the cyanostar macrocycles with the cationic dyes in a simple 2:1 ratio
The materials can be formulated into any form from thin films, crystals, powders, nanoparticles, dissolved in polymers for solution casting, extrusion and 3D printing
Design Studio
Vision for the SMILES Materials
We want to create a SMILES design studio to discover and create new materials faster than using domain expertise alone.
In the SMILES design studio, we will select the best dye candidates for the desired optical property.
New dyes are made every day. We want to screen them for their applicability as a SMILES material with novel, advanced or superior properties.
Have an idea for a dye, SMILES material or an optical property?
Multimedia Gallery
Collaborators
Our Team
We are a university-based and multi-disciplinary team seeking to create the knowledge and data-backed methods for creating optical materials by design using our newly discovered SMILES lattices.