Due to the ever-increasing demand for electrical energy, research on renewable energies has achieved tremendous gains. In this study nature has inspired us by the photosynthetic process and triggered the idea of applying the heart of this process (Photosystem1 (PS1)) as active layer in biobased solid state solar cells. Biophotovoltaic solar cells have many advantages such as low cost production, environmentally friendly, and easy waste management compared with other photovoltaic devices. The fabricated biophotovoltaic solar cells have exhibited an impressive increase in short-circuit current density from the low rate of the microamps per squared centimeter range, concluded by previous studies on PS1-based devices, up to the average value of 0.96 mA•cm −2 . Furthermore, these devices are characterized by average values of open-circuit voltage and fill factor of 0.25 V and 31%, respectively. A power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 0.069% is achieved, which is the highest efficiency reported to date for PS1based solid state solar cells.
The trends of using biological materials in electronic devices have made great developments in the last few years. Furthermore, the appealed cost features of organic semiconductors represent a bright lowcost, environment compatible, and efficient future for bio & nanotechnologies, especially Bio-organic solar cells which may consider as a noteworthy option for photovoltaic applications. Here, we report a novel single junction organic solar cell based on photosystem I pigment-protein complex. The complex which operated either as photosensitizer and charge generator compound, surprisingly. Photosystem I complexes were extracted from young spinach leaves and used as the active layer of the intended solidstate solar cell device, subsequently. After the characterization of the final cell, our photovoltaic system showed the current density of 3470 mA cm À2 which realizes as a notable approach in between photosystem-I based energy conversion systems.
Solar
energy is one of the cleanest energies that are abundant
among renewable energy sources. To design a very-low-cost solar device,
chlorophyll extracted from spinach was employed. Photosystem I (PSI)
was extracted by homogenization of spinach leaves and centrifugation
and fractionation by column chromatography. The dipole structure of
such natural photodiodes is one of the special features of the PSI
protein complex that we tried to align using pulsed external electric
fields to improve solar cell efficiency. To align PSI dipoles, several
approaches have exploited linkers such as amino acids or polymers.
Because of the difficulties of nonpolar or polar biomolecules, here,
our approach was to apply a uniform pulsed external electric field
(PEEF). With respect to other existing methods, our procedure is a
simple, low-cost, and efficient design of solar cells, which leads
to improved efficiency of biophotovoltaic cells up to a four-fold
increase.
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