Bio-inspired Photosynthetic Materials for Solar Energy Harvesting

21世纪对可持续、可再生能源的需求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，也是自然界通过光合作用过程最有效地利用的能源之一。光合作用的生物体通过在细胞膜中组装的光收集(LH)蛋白质阵列来捕捉太阳能。这些生物体--尤其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：如何获取足够的能量来驱动它们的细胞新陈代谢？这一能量难题是通过在叶绿体中的多个类囊体膜中堆积二维的黄体生成素蛋白阵列来优雅地解决的。作为自组装的一个极好的例子，在这些光合作用生物体中发现的3D蛋白质有序因此为开发人工光合作用材料提供了基本的设计原则。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，用于未来在能源收集表面和先进的光伏设备中的应用，该设备融合了生物分子、电子和材料组件。为此，我们将使用DNA-折纸将纳米级的捕光蛋白质定向放置在工程表面上。这种受生物启发的平台方法融合了“自下而上”DNA纳米技术和“自上而下”纳米光刻技术的原理，将首次提供控制每个光合蛋白模块的位置、模块之间的距离以及它们在2D和3D表面上的相对方向的方法。这一新的设计词典将提供一个框架，以关联这些参数如何影响生产一类新的生物太阳能收集表面和材料的总体光收集效率。学生将在一个既定的研究团队中工作，研究该系统的所有方面，从DNA折纸的设计，到蛋白质的捕获，再到随后的新型光收集材料的构建。这一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在纳米技术研究的前沿工作的绝佳机会。

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.