Cosensitization of broadly absorbing ruthenium metal complex dyes with highly absorptive near-infrared (NIR) organic dyes is a clear pathway to increase near-infrared light harvesting in liquid-based dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs). In cosensitized DSCs, dyes are intimately mixed, and intermolecular charge and energy transfer processes play an important role in device performance. Here, we de...

The effectiveness of the 1D nanorod (NR)-planted 3D inverse opal (IO) structure as an electrode for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) is demonstrated here. The NRs were grown on the surface of a macroporous IO structure and their longitudinal growth increased the surface area of the structure proportional to the growth duration. NR/IO electrodes with various NR growth times were compared. A re...

The photosystem II (PSII) light-harvesting antenna in higher plants contains a number of highly conserved gene products whose function is unknown. Arabidopsis thaliana plants depleted of one of these, the CP24 light-harvesting complex, have been analyzed. CP24-deficient plants showed a decrease in light-limited photosynthetic rate and growth, but the pigment and protein content of the thylakoid...

Photosystem II (PSII) initiates photosynthesis in plants through the absorption of light and subsequent conversion of excitation energy to chemical energy via charge separation. The pigment binding proteins associated with PSII assemble in the grana membrane into PSII supercomplexes and surrounding light harvesting complex II trimers. To understand the high efficiency of light harvesting in PSI...

The light-harvesting complexes of plants have evolved the ability to switch between efficient light harvesting and quenching forms to optimize photosynthesis in response to the environment. Several distinct mechanisms, collectively termed "nonphotochemical quenching" (NPQ), provide flexibility in this response. Here we report the isolation and characterization of a mutant, suppressor of quenchi...

Recently, solar energy harvesting circuits have been proposed to increase the autonomy of wireless sensor nodes. When the size of the photovoltaic module is very small, optimizing the efficiency of energy collection and tracking the Maximum Power Point (MPP) becomes hard and less effective. This paper tackles the challenge of powering a sensor node with miniaturized photovoltaic modules of some...

1. Background and purpose Recently we have studied a model [1] of lightinduced proton and electron pump in artificial reaction centers. The model contains a molecular triad, which is inserted between two (either proton or electron) reservoirs. The molecular triad transports protons (mediated by a shuttle) and electrons energetically uphill: from the lower energy reservoir to the higher energy r...

A recently developed technique for dilution of the naturally high protein packing density in isolated grana membranes was applied to study the dependence of the light harvesting efficiency of photosystem (PS) II on macromolecular crowding. Slight dilution of the protein packing from 80% area fraction to the value found in intact grana thylakoids (70%) leads to an improved functionality of PSII ...

We present a facile method for producing anti-fogging (AF) and anti-reflection (AR) coating functionalized photoanodes via one-step SiO2 nanoparticle coating for high performance solid state dye-sensitized solar cells (ssDSSCs). The AF and AR coating functionalized photoanodes are prepared by spin-coating of partially aggregated SiO2 colloidal solution. Poly((1-(4-ethenylphenyl)methyl)-3-butyl-...

Light-harvesting antenna complexes transfer energy from sunlight to photosynthetic reaction centers where charge separation drives cellular metabolism. The process through which pigments transfer excitation energy involves a complex choreography of coherent and incoherent processes mediated by the surrounding protein and solvent environment. The recent discovery of coherent dynamics in photosyn...