Download Summer Engineering Research Internship for US Students (SERIUS)    Host Department: Department of Materials Science & Engineering 

 Summer Engineering Research Internship for US Students (SERIUS) Host Department: Department of Materials Science & Engineering (http://www.mse.nus.edu.sg/) MSE Project 1 Project title Project description Nature of project eg exploratory, experimental, etc What participants are expected to achieve at the end of 8‐week attachment No. of participants able to host Supervisor Any other information/ requirements (eg programming skills, prerequisites, reading list, etc) Development of electrolytes to enhance the extraction of electrons from protein based solar cells Mother nature has created the most sophisticated and efficient solar energy conversion system in photosynthetic organisms such as plants, algae, and a wide variety of bacteria. These photosynthetic organisms use light harvesting antenna protein to capture the sun’s energy. This energy is then transferred to a photosynthetic protein, also known as the reaction center, where the primary process of charge separation begins. The excited electron then go through a series of electron transport chain to make chemical compounds to fuel the organisms’ activities. The ability to understand how we could harvest the electrons produced during photosynthesis would help us to better design photovoltaic devices with higher conversion efficiency. Hence in this final year project, the student will help to develop electrolytes to better receive electrons from photosynthetic proteins derived from a purple bacterium, called Rhodobacter Sphaeroides. Interested candidate please feel free to contact me at [email protected] Experimental To understand how the redox potential and impedance of the electrolytes affect the photo‐current output from the cells. 2 Asst Prof TAN Swee Ching http://www.dmse.nus.edu.sg/SweeChingGroup/Home.html It will be a bonus if students have some basic electrochemistry knowledge.