Fig. 2: Tracking exciton diffusion and annihilation in space and time on a well-defined multichromophoric DNA origami structure.

a Schematic of a short part of a 225 nm long 12-helix-bundle DNA origami structure with 6 inner and 6 outer helices. Five dyes (white discs) can be positioned at 3 nm spacing from each other. b Measured photoluminescence (PL) decay of a single DNA origami structure with five ATTO647N dye molecules. A single-exponential decay is observed with a PL lifetime of ~4.2 ns. Panel c shows five corresponding photon statistics histograms for different microtime bins (0–200, 200–400, 800–1000, 1600–1800 and 6400–6600 ps) in terms of the photon correlation events, N, of the two photodetectors. Data were accumulated for 54 single mcNPs. The number of independent chromophores, n, determined from the correlation histogram for each microtime bin is stated above the histograms.