Abstract
Many strategies for meeting mankind’s future energy demands through the exploitation of plentiful solar energy have been influenced by the efficient and sustainable processes of natural photosynthesis. A limitation affecting solar energy conversion based on photosynthetic proteins is the selective spectral coverage that is the consequence of their particular natural pigmentation. Here we demonstrate the bottom-up formation of semisynthetic, polychromatic photosystems in mixtures of the chlorophyll-based LHCII major light harvesting complex from the oxygenic green plant Arabidopsis thaliana, the bacteriochlorophyll-based photochemical reaction center (RC) from the anoxygenic purple bacterium Rhodobacter sphaeroides and synthetic quantum dots (QDs). Polyhistidine tag adaptation of LHCII and the RC enabled predictable self-assembly of LHCII/RC/QD nanoconjugates, the thermodynamics of which could be accurately modeled and parametrized. The tricomponent biohybrid photosystems displayed enhanced solar energy conversion via either direct chlorophyll-to-bacteriochlorophyll energy transfer or an indirect pathway enabled by the QD, with an overall energy transfer efficiency comparable to that seen in natural photosystems.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 4 |
Pages (from-to) | 4536-4549 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | ACS Nano |
Volume | 14 |
Early online date | 31 Mar 2020 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 31 Mar 2020 |
Keywords
- biohybrid
- self-assembly
- quantum dots
- photosynthesis
- light harvesting
- solar energy conversion