Review on optofluidic microreactors for artificial photosynthesis.

Xiaowen Huang,Abdel El Abed,Xuming Zhang,Jianchun Wang,Tenghao Li,Weixing Yu,Min Xu,Jianmei Wang

doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.5

Xiaowen Huang, Abdel El Abed + Show 6 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3762/bjnano.9.5

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Abstract

Artificial photosynthesis (APS) mimics natural photosynthesis (NPS) to store solar energy in chemical compounds for applications such as water splitting, CO2 fixation and coenzyme regeneration. NPS is naturally an optofluidic system since the cells (typical size 10 to 100 µm) of green plants, algae, and cyanobacteria enable light capture, biochemical and enzymatic reactions and the related material transport in a microscale, aqueous environment. The long history of evolution has equipped NPS with the remarkable merits of a large surface-area-to-volume ratio, fast small molecule diffusion and precise control of mass transfer. APS is expected to share many of the same advantages of NPS and could even provide more functionality if optofluidic technology is introduced. Recently, many studies have reported on optofluidic APS systems, but there is still a lack of an in-depth review. This article will start with a brief introduction of the physical mechanisms and will then review recent progresses in water splitting, CO2 fixation and coenzyme regeneration in optofluidic APS systems, followed by discussions on pending problems for real applications.

Highlights

The emerging energy crisis, the greenhouse effect and food shortage are devastating problems to be solved, and artificial photosynthesis (APS) is considered to be the most promising and viable method [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
APS is the human replication of natural photosynthesis (NPS)
The following review will start with a brief introduction on the mechanisms of photocatalysis-based APS

Summary

Introduction

The emerging energy crisis, the greenhouse effect and food shortage are devastating problems to be solved, and artificial photosynthesis (APS) is considered to be the most promising and viable method [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. The natural light-harvesting antenna complexes, photosystem II (PS II, P680) and photosystem I (PS I, P700), capture the photons and regenerate the coenzyme for carbohydrates synthesis (Figure 1D). Water splitting [24,25], light-driven CO2 reduction [26] and photo-coenzyme regeneration [27] (see Figure 2), which are promising solutions to the energy crisis, greenhouse effect and food shortage, respectively [24,26,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45].

Results

Conclusion