Quantum Bio-inspired Energy harvesting (QuBE)

该项目的中心假设是，生物灵感与微观尺度上的工程相结合，其中量子效应占主导地位，将使新型纳米天线能够应用于光伏、光学传感和电力传输。释放可持续能源是社会面临的一项重大挑战：全球能源需求的增加和二氧化碳水平的上升导致了人们对化石燃料的担忧，化石燃料是我们目前的主要能源。化石燃料不仅是一种快速减少的资源，它们的消费也被认为对我们的气候产生了极大的负面影响。尽管阳光充足且免费，但在我们的能源组合中只占相对较小的一部分，光收集技术的广泛采用受到相对较高的成本和现有光伏技术有限灵活性的阻碍。与此同时，阳光是大自然的能源：它直接或间接地维持着地球上几乎所有的生命。经过数亿年的时间，大自然优化了生物结构，为生物体内的能量捕获、转换、存储和传递提供了精细和高效的解决方案。在原子和分子尺度上，能量是“量化的”：它只以很小的一小块出现，例如，作为从受激发的原子发出的光子的能量。因此，捕获、传输和转换能量的最有效方法将利用我们对相关物理，即量子理论的最好理解。事实上，现在有强有力的证据表明，量子效应在某种程度上存在于自然光合作用中，这增加了它们甚至可能在这一过程中发挥作用的诱人的可能性。这激发了对量子增强型人工光收集作为能源问题潜在解决方案的研究。因此，该项目旨在将控制和设计量子工程凝聚态纳米结构的最先进技术与自然光合作用成熟和强大的设计原理工具箱的灵感结合起来。出于为下一代可持续能源收集技术制定蓝图的目标，它将专注于设计具有非经典、量子增强性能的新型天线。潜在的核心科学挑战是发展一种理论，使我们能够理解、设计和控制量子行为(波状干涉和叠加态)与更具破坏性的过程之间的相互作用，即通过不可避免的物理相互作用与更广泛的环境交换能量。当这两个方面都支配着相互作用的纳米结构集合的行为时--无论是复杂的分子还是人造半导体结构--这就打开了一个位于量子和经典世界之间的丰富的物理效应游乐场。这就是自然光合作用的运行机制，这个项目的目的是找到方法来复制甚至可能超越自然在不可逆转地从光中获取能量的关键第一步中的表现。除了为新型生物启发的廉价和灵活的光伏奠定科学基础之外，这个项目还将加深我们对与其他一系列应用相关的光-物质相互作用的基本理解。更广泛地说，这个项目符合在量子水平上理解和控制自然的令人兴奋的科学努力。这是未来几十年的重大科学挑战之一，有可能改变我们日常生活中使用的技术。目前，量子效应的实际应用潜力仅限于处理数据、传输信息和精细传感。该项目可能是朝着实现新的清洁能源生产方式迈出的一步。

The central hypothesis of this project is that biological inspiration combined with engineering at the microscopic scale, where quantum effects dominate, will enable new kinds of nano-antennae for applications in photovoltaics, optical sensing and power transfer. Unlocking sustainable sources of energy is a major challenge faced by society: increasing global energy needs and rising carbon dioxide levels have led to concerns about fossil fuels which are our current principal source of power. Not only are fossil fuels a fast-dwindling resource, their consumption is also believed to have a highly negative impact on our climate. Sunlight, despite being abundant and free, only constitutes a relatively minor fraction in our energy mix, with the widespread uptake of light-harvesting technologies being hampered by their relatively high cost and the limited flexibility of existing photovoltaic technologies. Meanwhile, sunlight is Nature's power source: it directly or indirectly sustains almost all life of Earth. Nature has optimised biological structures over hundreds of millions of years to produce finely tuned and highly efficient solutions for the energy capture, conversion, storage, and delivery within living organisms. On the atomic and molecular scale, energy is `quantised': it only occurs in tiny chunks, for example as the energy of a photon of light emitted from an excited atom. The most efficient way to capture, transport and convert energy will thus exploit our best understanding of the relevant physics, i.e. quantum theory. Indeed, there is now strong evidence that quantum effects are to some degree present in natural photosynthesis, raising the tantalising possibility that they may even play a functional role in the process. This motivates the study of quantum-enhanced artificial light-harvesting as a potential solution to the energy problem.This project therefore aims to combine the state-of-the-art in controlling and designing quantum-engineered condensed matter nanostructures with inspiration from Nature's toolbox of proven and robust design principles for photosynthesis. Motivated by the aim to develop blueprints for the next generation of sustainable energy harvesting technologies, it will focus on designing novel kind of antennae which feature non-classical, quantum-enhanced performance. The core underlying scientific challenge is to develop the theory that allows us to understand, engineer, and control the interplay between quantum behaviour (wave-like interference and superposition states) and the more destructive process of exchanging energy with the wider surroundings through unavoidable physical interactions. When both these aspects govern the behaviour of collections of interacting nanostructures - either complex molecules or artificial semiconductor structures - this opens a rich playground of physical effects situated squarely between the quantum and the classical world. This is the regime in which natural photosynthesis operates, and the aim of this project is to find ways of replicating and possibly even surpassing Nature's performance in the crucial first step of irreversibly capturing energy from light.Besides laying scientific groundwork for new kinds of bio-inspired cheap and flexible photovoltaics, this project will further our fundamental understanding of light-matter interactions of relevance for a range of other applications. More broadly, this project fits into the exciting scientific endeavour of understanding and controlling Nature at the quantum level. This is one of the great scientific challenges of the coming decades, with the potential to transform the technologies we use in our everyday lives. Currently the potential of quantum effects for practical applications is limited to processing data, transmitting information, and exquisite sensing. This project may be a step towards enabling new ways of generating clean energy.