Glowing materials have fascinated scientists for decades, inspiring technologies from bioimaging to OLED displays. While traditional explanations of fluorescence focus on specific molecular structures, new findings suggest that interactions within molecular aggregates may hold the key to a broader understanding of this phenomenon.
A collaboration between researchers in Trieste and Tel Aviv investigated this puzzle by combining simulations and experiments to study intrinsic fluorescence, focusing on the amino acid cysteine — a molecule not known to fluoresce on its own.
