Coupling isolated Photosystem II and Phycobilisomes to Nano-photocatalysts for overall water splitting

Photosynthesis is the most important solar-energy conversion processes in nature. This process supports all life on earth and still has been studied extensively. Semiconductor nanoparticles with typical optical features can be used as a hybrid synthetic-biological system for photocatalytic water splitting. By consuming minimal resources clean and renewable energy can be produced. We have previously shown that isolated PSII can be attached to gold-nanoparticles to harvest electrical current (Shoyhet et al. J. Mat. Chem. A 2021). Here we wish to improve this sysetm to obtain total water splitting with a broad absorption cross section. For this goal, we couple isolated photosystem II which is a powerful biological catalyst to isolated Phycobilisome antenna complexes (Hartmann et al. J. Mat. Chem. A, 2020), with semiconductor nanoparticles, while 2,6-Dichloro-1,4-Benzoquinone (DCBQ) will be used as an electron shuttle.