Electro-optical properties of the DNA-Eu3+ bio-membranes

• DNA is investigated for several electrochemical applications.
• Ln3+ make them well suited as luminescent groups, with applications in biotechnology.
• Thermal and electrochemical stability of electrolytes is adequate for devices.

Biopolymer-based materials have particular interest and they are alternatives to synthetic polymers based on the decreasing oil resources. In this report they may be viewed as innovative materials for optics area. The incorporation of Eu3+ into natural macromolecules hosts with purpose of producing highly efficient emitting phosphors is of widespread interest in materials science, due to their important roles in display devices. This paper describes studies of the DNA and europium triflate luminescent membranes and its potential technological applications are expanded to electroluminescent devices. The most conductive sample of DNA50Eu, exhibited an ionic conductivity equal to 1.02 × 10−4 S cm−1 and 1.55 × 10−3 S cm−1 at 25 °C and 90 °C, respectively. Techniques like DSC, XRD and POM, demonstrated that the inclusion of the guest salt does not change significantly the amorphous nature morphology of the samples. Moreover, the overall redox stability of 2.0 V was an indication that this material has an acceptable stability window for an application in a solid state electrochemical devices.