Efficient light harvesting and photon sensing via engineered cooperative effects

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel artificial light-harvesting device that leverages engineered cooperative effects, inspired by natural photosynthesis, to significantly improve efficiency by separating absorption and transfer processes.

Contribution

The authors design a new device that maximizes cooperative effects for light harvesting by separating absorption and transfer processes, overcoming emission-related efficiency limits.

Findings

Enhanced efficiency through process separation

Scalable design for improved light capture

Inspired by natural photosynthetic systems

Abstract

Efficient devices for light harvesting and photon sensing are fundamental building blocks of basic energy science and many essential technologies. Recent efforts have turned to biomimicry to design the next generation of light-capturing devices, partially fueled by an appreciation of the fantastic efficiency of the initial stages of natural photosynthetic systems at capturing photons. In such systems extended excitonic states are thought to play a fundamental functional role, inducing cooperative coherent effects, such as superabsorption of light and supertransfer of photoexcitations. Inspired by this observation, we design an artificial light-harvesting and photodetection device that maximally harnesses cooperative effects to enhance efficiency. The design relies on separating absorption and transfer processes (energetically and spatially) in order to overcome the fundamental obstacle to exploiting cooperative effects to enhance light capture: the enhanced emission processes that accompany superabsorption. This engineered separation of processes greatly improves the efficiency and the scalability of the system.