Merging Biology and Photovoltaics: How Nature Helps Sun‐Catching

Abstract

conditions. This makes difficult to further reduce the cost of electricity production. [7,8] Furthermore, although solar energy is a renewable source, it does not mean that any kind of photovoltaics (PV) is sustainable. For instance, silicon is an essential material in electronics and solar industries and, up to date, is irreplaceable. Despite its abundancy in Earth's crust, it is for the vast majority (80%) present as ferrosilicon, whose purification is expensive and highly pollutant. The production of 1 ton of silicon requires 6 tons of raw materials, almost 3 tons of Quartz, 1.5 tons of reducing agents, 1.5 tons of wood and 13 000 kWh of energy. [9,10] Therefore, in 2014 the EU commission included silicon metal in the critical raw material (CRM) list. [11] In this context, the third generation PV has reborn, offering cost-effective and efficient CRM-free devices with a lower reliance on the incident angle of light and integration in smart-end applications, like flexible and wearable devices, [12][13][14] fully transparent solar cells and windows, [15,16] and biocompatible devices. [17][18][19] The leading third generation SCs are organic solar cells (OSCs), [20][21][22] perovskite solar cells (PSCs), [23][24][25][26][27] and dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). [28][29][30] Despite their versatile applications and high performances, sustainability still represents a major issue toward becoming an ideal energy technology in the mid-long term future. Among others, fullerene-based materials are toxic, [31] indium tin oxide (ITO) is brittle, chemically unstable, and expensive due to limited indium sources on Earth's crust. [32,33] Cobalt is also listed as CRM, [11] while cadmium, selenium, lead and ruthenium are toxic materials. [34,35] With regard to flexible devices, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is the standard substrate; though its environmental footprint is critical and its nonbiodegradable properties lead to harmful effects in living organisms. [36] This has fueled a strong cooperation among the fields of engineering, biology, chemistry, and physics to discover new strategies for cost-effectiveness preparation and implementation of bio-derived materials in highly performing PVs.In general, this cooperation constitutes a part of the emerging and multidisciplinary field of biophotonics, [37] which involves biomedical optics, [38] living light, [39][40][41] biomimetic, biomaterials and bioengineered compounds, as well as fabrication/implementation methods applied to optoelectronics [42] and photonics, [43] among others. For instance, artificial lightning and biology have been recently merged with the implementation of cellulose, chitosan, silk, and fluorescent proteins as Accomplishing sustainability in optoelectronics, in general, and photovoltaics (PV), in particular, represents a crucial milestone in green photonics. Third generation PV technologies, such as organic solar cells (OSCs), perovskite solar cells (PSCs), and dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have reached a mature age and are slowly making thei...

Advances of Commercial and Biological Materials for Electron Transport Layers in Biological Applications

“…At this time, the application of some biologically derived materials with polar groups into ETL has aroused the interest of scientists, mainly because they can improve the morphology of the deposited perovskite, increase the grain size, and reduce the surface defects. In addition, these materials can modify the ETL/perovskite heterojunction interface and increase the charge extraction efficiency ( Cavinato et al, 2021 ). Table 4 summarizes the performance of PSCs prepared by several typical biological materials.…”

“…Catecholamine is rich in functional groups and can effectively functionalize the surface of the film. It has been successfully used in supercapacitor and drug delivery of biological therapy ( Cavinato et al, 2021 ). Moreover, carotenoids, as natural organic pigments, are ideal substitutes for p-type semiconductors.…”

“…In conclusion, due to the abundant functional groups in bio-derived materials, they can help common ETL materials to efficiently collect and transport charges, and PSCs devices modified with these materials achieve better performance ( Cavinato et al, 2021 ). Moreover, in addition to the performance enhancement, these modifications can also promote the improvement of device stability, which is crucial for the commercial production of PSCs.…”

Stabilisierung von Elektronentransferwegen erlaubt Stabilität von Biohybrid‐Photoelektroden über Jahre

“…Obwohl die Photosynthese insgesamt kein besonders energieeffizienter Prozess ist, [2] finden die primären Vorgänge der Energieübertragung beim Einfangen des Lichts und der Ladungstrennung bei der Energiestabilisierung mit sehr hohen Quanteneffizienzen statt (Vorgänge pro absorbiertem Photon) [3] . Die biomolekularen Grundlagen dieser hohen Effizienz haben das Design von künstlichen Materialien für die nachhaltige Umwandlung von Lichtenergie beeinflusst, [3, 4] und auch das Interesse an der direkten Integration photosynthetischer Komplexe in biohybride technische Anwendungen gestärkt [5–8] …”

Sustaining Electron Transfer Pathways Extends Biohybrid Photoelectrode Stability to Years

“…Although photosynthesis overall is not a particularly energy‐efficient process, [2] the primary events of energy transfer during light capture, and charge separation during energy stabilization, take place with very high quantum efficiencies (events per photon absorbed) [3] . The deduced biomolecular origins of this high efficiency have guided the design of man‐made materials for sustainable solar energy conversion, [3, 4] and also driven interest in the direct integration of photosynthetic complexes in biohybrid technological devices [5–8] …”