Supercapacitive Biosolar Cell Driven by Direct Electron Transfer between Photosynthetic Membranes and CNT Networks with Enhanced Performance

Abstract

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.

The influence of surface composition of carbon nanotubes on the photobioelectrochemical activity of thylakoid bioanodes mediated by osmium-complex modified redox polymer

“…Among the available electrode materials today and suitable for fabrication of photobioelectrochemical systems are carbon materials, and in particular carbon nanotubes (CNTs), which can be considered as promising matrices for immobilization of the photosynthetic component owing to their high specific surface area and electrical conductivity, broad possibilities of variable morphology dependent on the method of synthesis, and simplicity of chemical functionalization [14]. CNTs have been used as a support for the immobilization of TMs from the pioneering work by Calkins et al, where TMs were deposited on the surface of the CNTs and electron transfer occurred in the presence of a soluble redox mediator [15], to the recent example of supercapacitive photobioanodes [16].…”

Recent Progress in Applications of Enzymatic Bioelectrocatalysis

“…Particularly, in addition, the photosystem II (PSII) complex in the thylakoid membrane of cyanobacteria and higher plants is often used as a water-splitting anodic photo-bioelectrocatalyst [129,. Biosolar cells [163][164][165][166][167][168][169][170][171][172][173] and solar biosupercapacitors [129,164,168,174], using PSII/I, thylakoid membranes, or cyanobacteria in anodes, and BOD or laccase in cathodes, realized the conversion from solar to electric energy without any sacrificial reagents in total. On the other hand, photo-bioelectrosyntheses, also called artificial photosyntheses, are reported.…”

Three-Dimensional Sulfite Oxidase Bioanodes Based on Graphene Functionalized Carbon Paper for Sulfite/O2 Biofuel Cells

“…As a certain degree of electrode roughness and inhomogeneity is evidenced according to SEM images, the use of a constant phase element (CPE) instead of a capacitance is appropriate. [52][53][54] Table S4 shows that CPG gives the highest charge transfer resistance (Rct)…”