Supercapacitive Photo-Bioanodes and Biosolar Cells: A Novel Approach for Solar Energy Harnessing

Photo-bioelectrochemicals cells, employing subcellular or cellular photosynthetic omponents for light energy harvesting, can be considered as a potential substitute for conventional photovoltaic devices, despite the significantly lower power output values achieved. Gold disc electrodes have been employed in the solar energy convertig part (SCP) as acurrent collector to diminish the capacitance of the SCP and to study the influence of the capacitance of the charge storing component on the performance of photo-bioanodes. Employment of a charge-storing component in a thylakoid membrane (TM)-based photo-bioanode facilitates the elctron transfer processes occurring in the system, increases the photocurrent desnity up to 2.5 times in continuous mode and allows attainment of promising characteristics in pulse mode. The highest power output and operational stability ever demonstrated for TM-based biosolar cells was achieved.