Photosythesis can be re-engineered in a solar cell to produce electricity
Photovoltaic panels made from plant material could become a cheap, easy alternative to traditional solar cells. An entirely novel approach to photovoltaics has been developed. By taking the very protein in plants that allows for photosythesis and engineering it to produce electrical current, researcher Andreas Mershin has opened the door for potentially cheap and easy to reproduce solar energy. In his original work, researcher Zhang was able to enlist a complex of molecules known as photosystem-I (PS-I), the tiny structures within plant cells that carry out photosynthesis. Zhang and colleagues derived the PS-I from plants, stabilized it chemically and formed a layer on a glass substrate that could — like a conventional photovoltaic cell — produce an electric current when exposed to light. The next step was to find ways to amplify this current. Researcher Mershin from EPFL was able to adapt a photovoltaic substrate that is significantly more responsive to sunlight.
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