Investigation of the production, purification and application potential of bacteriorhodopsin for bio optoelectronic device

Bacteriorhodopsin (BR) is a transmembrane protein that found in Halobacterium salinarum which is a halophilic bacterium. BR, after being activated by solar energy, acts as a proton pump and creates energy. Besides this property, BR, also shows resistance to various physical conditions and hence makes it more interesting. Among many important implementations, BR also takes part in renewable energy applications. In this research, H. salinarum DSM 671strain was used to obtain Bacteriorhodopsin Based Biomolecule Sensitized Solar Cell (BR-BSSC). For this purpose, BR was synthesized by H. salinarum DSM 671 and for optimization of growth conditions, an experimental design program was used. After sequential application of Plackett-Burman and Central Composite Design. BR was obtained in proportion of 95.3 mgL-1. Following aqueous-two-phase system purification, BR was used to produce two different devices named as Glass/FTO/TiO2/BR/MoO3/Au (D1) and Glass/FTO/ZnO/BR/MoO3/Au (D2). The efficiency of these devices were 0.8989 and 0.8429 respectively.