Nanowire-Bacteria Hybrids for Unassisted Solar Carbon Dioxide Fixation to Value-Added Chemicals

By Liu, Chong; Gallagher, Joseph J.; Sakimoto, Kelsey K.; Nichols, Eva M.; Chang, Christopher J.; Chang, Michelle C. Y. & Yang, Peidong
Published in Nano Letters NULL 2015

Abstract

Direct solar-powered production of value-added chemicals from Co? and H?O, a process that mimics natural photosynthesis, is of fundamental and practical interest. In natural photosynthesis, Co? is first reduced to common biochemical building blocks using solar energy, which are subsequently used for the synthesis of the complex mixture of molecular products that form biomass. Here we report an artificial photosynthetic scheme that functions via a similar two-step process by developing a biocompatible light-capturing nanowire array that enables a direct interface with microbial systems. As a proof of principle, we demonstrate that a hybrid semiconductor nanowire-bacteria system can reduce Co? at neutral pH to a wide array of chemical targets, such as fuels, polymers, and complex pharmaceutical precursors, using only solar energy input. The high-surface-area silicon nanowire array harvests light energy to provide reducing equivalents to the anaerobic bacteri

Read Article » Back