PHOTOSYNTHESIS VIEWED IN A FLASH
A new method of examining the inner workings of plants has shed light on how they harvest the Sun's energy.
Researchers have taken laser snapshots lasting just one ten-thousandth of a billionth of a second to examine the role of electrons in energy transfer. The approach will be key in discovering how energy trickles through other systems, such as electronic devices, and could lead to better solar cells.
Ian Mercer of University College Dublin, Ireland, collaborating with researchers at Imperial College London, UK, examined the protein LH2, a well-known photosynthetic system. The protein helps to pull electrons out of water which are then used to drive the reaction that makes sugars from carbon dioxide.
Many research has been performed to assess the role of electrons in that process with a view to increasing the performance of solar cells, most of which currently operate at an efficiency around just 10%.
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What has remained unclear, though, is the degree to which electrons interact with each other or with other molecules of the machinery. A number of laser-based methods have been developed to examine that electron coupling, but they require that the delicate proteins are subject to thousands or millions of laser pulses, which can change their structure or destroy them altogether.
The new method works by splitting powerful laser pulses into three beams and crossing them in the protein samples in a specific geometry.The light that comes out gives for the first time an unambiguous picture of how the different colours - and thus energies - interact inside the protein.
"We're looking at the shape of something before the laser was even there - it's a whole new world of what you can look at."
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