Graduate School of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, 060-0814, Japan.
Photocatalytic Materials Group, International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (WPI-MANA), National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305- 0044, Japan.
Small. 2018 May;14(19):e1800104. doi: 10.1002/smll.201800104. Epub 2018 Apr 10.
Photosynthetic biocatalysts are emerging as a new class of materials, with their sophisticated and intricate structure, which promise improved remarkable quantum efficiency compared to conventional inorganic materials in artificial photosynthesis. To break the limitation of efficiency, the construction of bioconjugated photo-electrochemical conversion devices has garnered substantial interest and stood at the frontier of the multidisciplinary research between biology and chemistry. Herein, a biohybrid photoanode of a photosynthetic membrane protein (Photosystem II (PS II)), extracted from fresh spinach entrapped on mesoporous WO film, is fabricated on fluorine-doped tin oxide. The PS II membrane proteins are observed to communicate with the WO electrode in the absence of any soluble redox mediators and sacrificial reagents under the visible light of the solar spectrum, even to 700 nm. The biohybrid electrode undergoes electron transfer and generates a significantly enhanced photocurrent compared to previously reported PS II-based photoanodes with carbon nanostructures or other semiconductor substrates for solar water oxidation. The maximum incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency reaches 15.24% at 400 nm in the visible light region. This work provides some insights and possibilities into the efficient assembly of a future solar energy conversion system based on visible-light-responsive semiconductors and photosynthetic proteins.
光合作用生物催化剂作为一类新兴的材料，具有复杂而精巧的结构，有望在人工光合作用中比传统无机材料提高显著的量子效率。为了突破效率的限制，构建生物共轭光电化学转换器件引起了广泛的关注，并处于生物学和化学之间多学科研究的前沿。在此，从新鲜菠菜中提取的光合作用膜蛋白（光系统 II (PS II)）的生物杂化光阳极被构建在掺氟氧化锡上。在太阳能光谱的可见光下，观察到 PS II 膜蛋白在没有任何可溶性氧化还原介质和牺牲试剂的情况下与 WO 电极进行通讯，甚至在 700nm 处也是如此。与以前报道的基于碳纳米结构或其他半导体衬底的 PS II 光阳极相比，生物杂化电极进行电子转移并产生显著增强的光电流，用于太阳能水氧化。在可见光区域，最大的光电流转换效率在 400nm 时达到 15.24%。这项工作为基于可见光响应半导体和光合作用蛋白的高效未来太阳能转换系统的组装提供了一些见解和可能性。
