ABSTRACT
Nature has shaped leaves to adopt cellular structures and arrangement that optimize the first step of photosynthesis, which is the capture of sunlight. Solar energy can be economically viable even in regions where sunlight is scarce. The first mention of artificial photosynthesis for applications in solar energy conversion dates back a century ago. Some natural leaf surface structures of desert plants are able to reflect a great portion of the incident light to decrease the amount of solar energy received. Through millions of years of evolution, photosynthetic organisms have optimized solar energy harvesting and conversion through an intricate scaffold of proteins in which ordered assemblies of photofunctional chromophores and catalysts lie. The seminal work in surface area started in 1984 when the structure of the Reaction Center (RC) from Rhodopseudomonas viridis was determined by X-ray crystallography. Mother Nature has produced a variety of Light-Harvesting (LH) structures, reflecting the diversity of environments in which the organisms live.
