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Photoactive Electrodes Incorporating Electrosprayed Bacterial Reaction Centers
Author(s) -
Mirvakili Seyed M.,
Slota Joanna E.,
Usgaocar Ashwin R.,
Mahmoudzadeh Ali,
Jun Daniel,
Mirvakili Mehr Negar,
Beatty J. Thomas,
Madden John D. W.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
advanced functional materials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.069
H-Index - 322
eISSN - 1616-3028
pISSN - 1616-301X
DOI - 10.1002/adfm.201400350
Subject(s) - photocurrent , materials science , rhodobacter sphaeroides , photosynthetic reaction centre , quantum yield , photochemistry , purple bacteria , optoelectronics , semiconductor , electrode , absorption (acoustics) , solar cell , yield (engineering) , highly oriented pyrolytic graphite , photosynthesis , graphite , electron transfer , optics , chemistry , fluorescence , physics , biochemistry , metallurgy , composite material
Highly efficient light absorption and charge separation within the photosystem and reaction center (RC) complexes of photosynthetic plants and bacteria are of great interest for solar cell and photo detector applications, since they offer almost unity quantum yield and expected ultimate power conversion efficiencies of more than 18% and 12%, respectively. In addition, the charge separated states created by these protein complexes are very long lived compared to conventional semiconductor solar cells. In this work, a novel technique is presented for the deposition of photosynthetic protein complexes, by electrospraying RCs of Rhodobacter sphaeroides onto highly ordered pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) electrodes. Remarkably, it is shown that the RCs not only survive exposure to the high electric fields but also yield peak photocurrent densities of up to 7 μA cm −2 , which is equal to the highest value reported to date.