Integrating photosynthetic cell components with nanostructured materials can facilitate the conversion of solar energy into electric power for creating sustainable carbon-neutral energy sources. With the aim at exploring efficient photoinduced biocatalytic energy conversion systems, we have used an amidated carbon nanotube (aCNT) networked matrix to integrate thylakoid membranes (TMs) for construction of a direct electron transfer-driven biosolar cell. We have evaluated the resulting photobioelectrochemical cells systematically. Compared to the carboxylated CNT (cCNT)-TMs system, the aCNT-TMs system enabled a 1.5-fold enhancement in photocurrent density. This system offers more advantages including a reduced charge-transfer resistance, a lower open-circuit potential, and an improved cell stability. More remarkably, the average power density of the optimized cells was 250 times higher than that of reported analogue systems. Our results suggest the significance of physical and electronic interactions between the photosynthetic components and the support nanomaterials and may offer new clues for designing improved biosolar cells.

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Highly oriented UHMWPE films were reinforced with functionalized graphene nanoplates (GNP). GNP was functionalized by deposition of polyaniline (PANI) on the GNP surface. The structure of GNP/PANI was studied by Raman spectroscopy, and the structure of xerogels and films based on UHMWPE was studied by DSC and SEM. PANI promotes the reduction of the GNP aggregation in the UHMWPE matrix and increases the degree of crystallinity due to heterogeneous crystallization. The new lamellar crystal structure has a high drawability. The highest value of the tensile strength 1330 MPa (an increase of 45%) was obtained with a filler content of 2 wt % GNP/PANI, and the highest value of Young’s modulus 41 GPa (an increase of 32%) was obtained with a filler content of 1 wt % GNP/PANI. The effect of GNP with PANI fillers on the dynamic mechanical properties of the UHMWPE films was discussed.

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