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The field of molecular electronics is characterized by an attempt to engineer and use
devices on a molecular level. Supramolecular chemistry is one way to produce such
molecular devices. However, long before supramolecular chemists tried to synthesize
highly organized artificial systems often employing principles of living nature, nature
itself has produced and optimized biological systems on a molecular device level
during a long period of evolution.
Over the last decades our unterstanding of the structure and function of these
biological systems has grown rapidly. The study of bacteriorhodopsin (BR) and the
elucidation of its function as a light driven proton pump, is only one of many
examples.
The first aim of this paper is to examine these materials from a technical point of view
and describe how advantage can be taken of these naturally optimized systems as
molecular devices in various optical applications. The second aim is to examine the
idea of using conventional mutagenesis or genetic engineering in order to obtain a
variety of systems with different properties, where each of them may meet the
requirements of a different technical application in a very specific way. This further
broadens and optimizes the potential applications of the biological systems as
molecular devices. It should be emphasized that with this direction of research a new
approach in material science has been introduced.
Christoph R. Braeuchle
"Bacteriorhodopsin: optical processor molecules from nature", Proc. SPIE 2321, Second International Conference on Optoelectronic Science and Engineering '94, (5 August 1994); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.182105
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Christoph R. Braeuchle, "Bacteriorhodopsin: optical processor molecules from nature," Proc. SPIE 2321, Second International Conference on Optoelectronic Science and Engineering '94, (5 August 1994); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.182105