Increasing Photocurrents in Biosolar Cells using Microporous Electrodes - A Feasibility Study

太阳能(或光伏能源)提供了一种大规模发电的技术，避免了现有化石燃料方法的缺陷，即煤炭、石油或天然气在燃烧时会产生大量二氧化碳，从而导致气候变化和其他不受欢迎的废物(例如导致酸雨的二氧化硫)。太阳能可通过多种方式获取(例如，使用晶态或非晶态硅或砷化镓太阳能电池)。这些太阳能电池可以制造成非常高效的(例如，用于太空应用)。然而，它们的主要缺点是，无论是从金钱上还是从生产它们所用的能源来看，它们都很昂贵。这导致了这类技术的回报时间更长。大自然已经开发出了自己形式的光合作用形式的太阳能电池，这种电池足够有效地支持整个地球的植物性生物圈。当水分裂为氧、质子和电子时，光合作用通过吸收光来产生电势差。这发生在植物叶片细胞的叶绿体中。在这个方案中，我们将测试提取光合作用的类囊体膜，将它们连接到优化的镀金电极上，并将得到的太阳能电池用作低成本的太阳能收集器。众所周知，这种太阳能电池能够产生非常小的光电流。因此，这项提议的主要目的是增加这些光电流(通过优化电极设计和类囊体体生产)，使该技术能够成为可行的商业技术。

Solar energy (or photovoltaic energy) offers a technology for large scale energy generation which avoids the pitfalls of existing fossil fuel methods where coal, oil or gas which, when burnt, generate huge amounts of carbon dioxide which causes climate change along with other undesirable waste products (e.g. sulfur dioxide which causes acid rain). Solar energy can be captured in a number of ways (e.g. using crystalline or amorphous silicon or gallium arsenide solar cells). These solar cells can be fabricated to be very efficient (for instance for use in space applications). However, their major drawback is that they are expensive both in monetary terms and in terms of the energy used to produce them. This leads to longer pay-back times for this type of technology.Nature has developed its own form of solar cells in the form of photosynthesis which is sufficiently effective to support the entire plant-based biosphere of the planet. Photosynthesis operates by light being absorbed to create an electrical potential difference when water is split into oxygen, protons and electrons. This takes place in the chloroplast of cells which are held in plant leaves. Within these chloroplasts, lie thylakoid membranes and these membranes are where photosynthesis takes place.In this proposal, we will test the feasibility of extracting photosynthetic thylakoid membranes, attaching them to optimized gold-coated electrodes and using the resulting solar cells as low cost solar energy harvesters. It is known that such solar cells are capable of generating very small photocurrents. Thus, the principal aim of this proposal is to increase these photocurrents (by optimizing electrode design and thylakoid production) so that the technology can become a viable commercial technology.