A Metal-Solution FET Enhanced Proton-Motive-Force Driving Photovoltaic

A chloroplastmimic photovoltaic that is powered by proton motive force and able to generate electricity using only water and photocatalyst is discussed in this paper. The working principle for the proposed photovoltaic is based on Fick's law. A TiO
₂
/carbon nanotube laminated photocatalyst was adopted to enhance the proton motive force; an n-type silicon membrane with nanochannels was implemented as the artificial thylakoid membrane; and a small bias was applied to the artificial thylakoid membrane to analogize the photovoltaic to a multichannel p-channel depletion-type metal-solution FET, such that the flux of the proton can be effectively raised. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed simple chloroplastmimic photovoltaic can produce photocurrent directly from visible light using only pure water and photocatalyst.