Perspective of energy transfer from light energy into biological energy

Energy has always been the most concerned topic in the world due to the large consumption. Various types of energy have been exploited and developed to enhance the output amount so that high requirements can be met. Like the hydro-energy, wind energy, and tidal energy, light energy as a renewable, clean, and widespread energy can be easily harvested. In microcosmic scale, some specific proteins and enzymes in green plants and bacteria play an important role in light harvest and energy conversion via photosynthesis. Inspired by the biomimetic sparks, these bioactive macromolecules and some artificially synthetic unites have been integrated together to improve the light-harvesting, and enhance their utilization efficiency. In this feature article, we primarily discuss that how to create the bio-inorganic hybrid energy converted system via biomimetic assembly strategy and artificially achieve the transformation from light into bioenergy, meanwhile highlight some promising works. (C) 2017, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.