Cultivating microalgae has the potential to produce biofuels and bioproducts from solar energy with low land use and without competing with food crops.

The conversion of solar energy to chemical energy useful for maintaining cellular function in photosynthetic algae and cyanobacteria relies critically on light delivery to the microorganisms. Conventional direct irradiation of a bulk suspension leads to non-uniform light distribution within a strongly absorbing culture, and related inefficiencies. The study of small colonies of cells in controlled microenvironments would benefit from control over wavelength, intensity, and location of light energy on the scale of the microorganism. Here we demonstrate that the evanescent light field, confined near the surface of a waveguide, can be used to direct light into cyanobacteria and successfully drive photosynthesis. The method is enabled by the synergy between the penetration depth of the evanescent field and the size of the photosynthetic bacterium, both on the order of micrometres. Wild type Synechococcus elongatus (ATCC 33912) cells are exposed to evanescent light generated through total internal reflection of red (λ = 633 nm) light on a prism surface. Growth onset is consistently observed at intensity levels of 79 ± 10 W m(-2), as measured 1 μm from the surface, and 60 ± 8 W m(-2) as measured by a 5 μm depthwise average. These threshold values agree well with control experiments and literature values based on direct irradiation with daylight. In contrast, negligible growth is observed with evanescent light penetration depths less than the minor dimension of the rod-like bacterium (achieved at larger light incident angles). Collectively these results indicate that evanescent light waves can be used to tailor and direct light into cyanobacteria, driving photosynthesis.

Waveguides with thicknesses similar to biofilms (10–100 µm) provide an opportunity to improve the bioenergy density of biofilm photobioreactors, avoiding the fundamental light- and mass-transport productivity limitations of planktonic photobioreactors. This report investigates the biofilm growth of a mutant of Synechococcus elongatus (PCC 7942) in evanescent light fields that can be scaled over large planar areas. In this study, areas of 7.2 cm2 are illuminated via frustrated total internal reflections on planar waveguides. The resulting photosynthetic biofilm growth showed resilience to surface intensities exceeding photosynthetic limits and a more uniform cell density distribution (1.0 ± 0.3 × 109 mL−1) than predicted from surface light distribution profiles. These results indicate potential for larger area biofilms using the uniform lighting conditions identified. The combination of evanescent illumination with biofilms indicates a modular reactor cell density on the order of 108 mL−1, representing a two orders of magnitude improvement over current facility architectures, with significant potential for further improvement through denser biofilms.