Livewire + Firebase-PHP - variable doesnt get passed from one function to the other

From title, how do I pass QuerySnapshot variable from render() into another function? I tried json_encode'ing into front end but it doesnt work, so my next option is to save it in a private variable and attempt to use it rather than calling Firebase transaction again.

Livewire class

private QuerySnapshot $results;

public function render() {
	// other code redacted
	$queryRes = $this->db->collection('collection-to-find');

	if(!$this->error) {
		if($this->searchString)
				$queryRes = $queryRes->where('filter', '==', $this->searchString)->documents();
		else {
				$queryRes = $queryRes->documents();
		}
	}

	$this->results = $queryRes; //save it to QuerySnapshot  $results
	return view(' <redacted> ');
}

public function download() // the supposed receiving function after pressing the front-end livewire button
{
	dd($this->results); // this returns null
	
	// this will return Excel::download with $this->results as the parameter to it.
}