The Fall 2018 issue of Frontiers in Energy Research features BioLEC in the article “Mother Nature Does It Better: The advantages and challenges of incorporating biology into the science of energy”.
To implement the current understanding of biological systems into new energy-harvesting devices, researchers at the recently established BioLEC are launching new projects to put pieces from synthetic chemistry, device fabrication, characterization, and biology together to invent new ways of cultivating energy with inspiration from photosynthesis.
Scientists observe the reaction mechanisms in place for photosynthesis and try to implement them into new designs. During photosynthesis, photons’ energy is used to induce chemical reactions. To facilitate these reactions, plants use complex structures that act as photoredox catalysts. Photoredox catalysts use energy from light photons to perform an oxidation-reduction reaction, where electron transfers between chemical species to produce new products. Human-made photoredox systems are limited to one photon reaction with low absorption cross-section, causing low turnover of these systems.
However, plants solved this problem by creating large chemical “antennas” to absorb light and funnel the light into the catalytic site, so all the needed energy arrives at a fast pace to these sites. The chemistry that is common in photosynthesis of plants is still not possible to do in a lab environment, because there is not enough detailed understanding of these mechanisms at the molecular level. Therefore, scientists at BioLEC are focusing their effort to design, fabricate, and characterize systems with higher absorption cross-sections and multi-photon excitation capabilities.