Abstract

Photosynthesis provides food, energy and ecosystem to sustain all forms of life. The light conversion and self-protection mechanisms of natural photosynthetic organisms serve as ideal blueprints of artificial systems for exploiting clean and plentiful solar energy, and for developing novel molecular electronics. We have attempted to elucidate the light conversion and photo-protection mechanisms of some photosynthetic membrane proteins by means of time-resolved spectroscopies, hyper-Rayleigh light scattering, steady-state Raman and temperature dependent fluorescence spectroscopies, as well as three-dimensional structural modeling.

© 2009 IEEE