7 / 16
allied
academies
Page 60
May 20-21, 2019 | Vienna, Austria
Biomaterials and Nanomaterials &
Materials Physics and Materials Science
2
nd
International Conference on
Journal of Materials Science and Nanotechnology | Volume 3
Artificial photosynthesis enabled by nature’s blueprints and building blocks
Elena A Rozhkova
Argonne National Laboratory, USA
T
he biological use of the solar energy for syntheses
of fuels from water and carbon dioxide has been
inspiring researchers and engineers in their efforts to
replace current exhaustible energy sources to renewable
energy technologies. Environmentally friendly schemes
of photocatalytic visible-light hydrogen production
known as artificial photosynthesis along with inorganic
semiconductor material also utilize biological structures,
such as enzymes, machineries of whole microorganism,
capable of light-harvesting, water splitting, carbon
dioxide and proton reduction. We have been developing
visible-light-driven nano-bio photocatalysts for hydrogen
production based on non-covalent assemblies of the
natural and synthetic membrane proton pump and TiO2
semiconductor nanoparticles. Anaturalmembrane complex
of retinal-containing proton pump bacteriorhodopsin
(also known as purple membranes, PM) from the
extremophile microorganism Halobacterium salinarum has
been attracting an attention of researchers owing to its
exceptional robustness, excellent photophysical properties,
and structure−functional elegance. We demonstrated
applicability of PMs in sunlight transformation systems
constructed from TiO2, boosted with introduction of
reduced graphene oxide rGO, or more recently, constructed
as entirely synthetic PM – semiconductor architecture
using cell-free synthetic biology approach. Merging
nanotechnology and synthetic biology approaches allows
for systemic manipulation at the nanoparticle−bio interface
toward directed evolution of energy materials, novel
catalytic systems and artificial life structures.
e
:
rozhkova@anl.gov