Bio-inspired Photosynthetic Materials for Solar Energy Harvesting

对可持续的、可再生能源的需求在21世纪世纪是人类面临的最重要的社会和科学挑战之一。在各种可用的可再生能源中，太阳能是迄今为止最大的，并且是通过光合作用过程在自然界中最有效地利用的能源之一。光合生物利用组装在细胞膜内的光收集（LH）蛋白阵列捕获太阳能。这些生物体--特别是那些生活在光挑战环境中的生物体--面临着一个可怕的能量问题：如何捕获足够的能量来驱动它们的细胞代谢？这个能量难题通过将LH蛋白质的二维阵列堆叠在叶绿体中的多个类囊体膜内来优雅地解决。在这些光合生物中发现的3D蛋白质有序化是自组装的一个精美例子，因此提供了开发人工光合材料的基本设计原则。这项研究计划旨在设计和构建新一代DNA编程的光收集组件，用于未来能量收集表面和先进的光伏器件，融合生物分子，电气和材料组件。为此，我们将使用DNA-Origami将纳米级精度的捕光蛋白直接放置在工程表面上。这种生物启发的平台方法融合了“自下而上”DNA纳米技术与“自上而下”纳米光刻的原理，并将首次提供控制每个光合蛋白模块的位置、模块间距离及其沿沿着表面在2D和3D中的相对取向的手段。这个新的设计词典将提供一个框架，以关联这些参数如何影响整体光收集效率，以生产一类新的生物太阳能收集表面和材料。学生将在一个成熟的研究团队中工作，研究系统的各个方面，从DNA折纸的设计，到蛋白质的捕获，再到新型捕光材料的后续构建。这个多学科项目为具有生物工程，物理，化学或生物学背景的学生提供了一个极好的机会，可以在纳米技术研究的最前沿工作。

The demand for sustainable, renewable sources of energy in the 21st century is one of the most important societal and scientific challenges faced by humanity. Of the various renewable energy sources available, solar energy is by far the largest and is one which is most effectively utilised in Nature via the processes of photosynthesis. Photosynthetic organisms capture solar energy using arrays of Light Harvesting (LH) proteins assembled within cell membranes. These organisms - particularly those that reside in light-challenged environments - are faced with a formidable energy problem: How to capture sufficient energy to drive their cellular metabolism? This energy conundrum is elegantly addressed by stacking two-dimensional arrays of LH proteins within multiple thylakoid membranes housed in chloroplasts. An exquisite example of self-assembly, the 3D protein ordering found in these photosynthetic organisms therefore provides the fundamental design principles to develop artificial photosynthetic materials.This research programme seeks to design and construct a new generation of DNA-programmed light-harvesting assemblies for the future applications in energy harvesting surfaces and advanced photovoltaic devices that fuse biomolecular, electrical and material components. To do so we will use DNA-Origami to direct the placement of light harvesting proteins with nano-scale precision onto engineered surfaces. This bio-inspired platform methodology merges the principles of "bottom up" DNA nanotechnology with "top down" nanolithography and would provide the means to control, for the first time, the location of each photosynthetic protein module, inter-module distance and their relative orientation in both 2D and 3D along surfaces. This new design lexicon will provide a framework to correlate how these parameters influence overall light harvesting efficiency for the production of a new class of bio-enabled solar energy harvesting surfaces and materials. The student will work within an established research team to investigate all aspects of the system, from design of the DNA-origami, to the capture of the proteins, to the subsequent construction of novel light-harvesting materials. This multidisciplinary project represents an excellent opportunity for a student with a background in either bio-engineering, physics, chemistry or biology to work at the forefront of nanotechnology research.