Scientists Look to Plants to Increase Solar Panel Efficiency

Taking notes from the light-harvesting protein complex of plants and certain bacteria, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University have assembled a nanohybrid structure that contains both biologically derived and inorganic materials. The researchers combined a light-harvesting protein from a cyanobacteria with quantum dots and a 2D semiconducting transition metal only one atomic layer thick. This nanostructure could be used to improve solar cell efficiency. When the system is excited with light (blue lightning strike symbol), energy is transferred in a stepwise manner through the different components, as indicated by the gray arrows. A top view of the APC protein...