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.

在过去的十年中，我们对生物光合作用系统中的相干现象和振动现象如何有效地将能量从光收集天线传输到光合作用反应中心的理解有了迅速的发展。这样的连贯效应表明即使存在结构障碍也可以增加运输长度的策略。在这里，我们探讨了如何利用这些原理来制造改进的太阳能电池。我们将深入研究有机材料的情况，通过克服因静态和动态无序（结构和高能）的影响以及固有的强电子-振动耦合的影响而改善能量和电荷传输的系统。我们讨论了太阳能电池设备架构如何演变为使用相干利用材料，我们推测出相干能量转换系统的前景。我们以连贯性和生物激发对包括人工光合作用系统在内的多种太阳能收集解决方案的影响的调查结束。