This paper describes the fabrication of microfluidic devices with a focus on controlling the orientation of photosystem I (PSI) complexes, which directly affects the performance of biophotovoltaic devices by maximizing the efficiency of the extraction of electron/hole pairs from the complexes. The surface chemistry of the electrode on which the complexes assemble plays a critical role in their orientation. We compared the degree of orientation on self-assembled monolayers of phenyl-C₆₁-butyric acid and a custom peptide on nanostructured gold electrodes. Biophotovoltaic devices fabricated with the C₆₁ fulleroid exhibit significantly improved performance and reproducibility compared to those utilizing the peptide, yielding a 1.6-fold increase in efficiency. In addition, the C₆₁-based devices were more stable under continuous illumination. Our findings show that fulleroids, which are well-known acceptor materials in organic photovoltaic devices, facilitate the extraction of electrons from PSI complexes without sacrificing control over the orientation of the complexes, highlighting this combination of traditional organic semiconductors with biomolecules as a viable approach to coopting natural photosynthetic systems for use in solar cells.

中文翻译：

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富勒烯增强生物光伏器件中光系统 I 的自组装和电子注入

本文描述了微流体装置的制造，重点是控制光系统 I (PSI) 复合物的方向，通过最大限度地从复合物中提取电子/空穴对的效率，直接影响生物光伏器件的性能。复合物组装在其上的电极的表面化学对其取向起着关键作用。我们比较了苯基-C ₆₁ -丁酸的自组装单层和纳米结构金电极上的定制肽的取向程度。与使用该肽的生物光伏装置相比，使用C ₆₁富勒体制造的生物光伏装置表现出显着改善的性能和再现性，效率提高了 1.6 倍。此外，C基于₆₁的设备在连续照明下更稳定。我们的研究结果表明，作为有机光伏器件中众所周知的受体材料，富勒体有助于从 PSI 复合物中提取电子，而不会牺牲对复合物方向的控制，突出了传统有机半导体与生物分子的这种结合是一种可行的方法选择用于太阳能电池的天然光合作用系统。