Photovoltaic concepts inspired by coherence effects in photosynthetic systems

TLDR: The impacts of coherence and bioinspiration on diverse solar-energy harvesting solutions, including artificial photosynthetic systems are surveyed, and the prospects for a coherent energy conversion system are speculated.

Abstract: Lessons learned from coherent phenomena in biological photosynthetic systems may be useful to improve energy- and charge-transport in disordered materials. This Review describes coherence and its potential beneficial effects in photovoltaics. The past decade has seen rapid advances in our understanding of how coherent and vibronic phenomena in biological photosynthetic systems aid in the efficient transport of energy from light-harvesting antennas to photosynthetic reaction centres. Such coherence effects suggest strategies to increase transport lengths even in the presence of structural disorder. Here we explore how these principles could be exploited in making improved solar cells. We investigate in depth the case of organic materials, systems in which energy and charge transport stand to be improved by overcoming challenges that arise from the effects of static and dynamic disorder — structural and energetic — and from inherently strong electron–vibration couplings. We discuss how solar-cell device architectures can evolve to use coherence-exploiting materials, and we speculate as to the prospects for a coherent energy conversion system. We conclude with a survey of the impacts of coherence and bioinspiration on diverse solar-energy harvesting solutions, including artificial photosynthetic systems.