Photovoltaic effects in biomembranes/spl minus/reverse-engineering naturally occurring molecular optoelectronic devices

Discusses the fundamental principles of the fast photoelectric effect and its applications to molecular electronics research. The principles are illustrated with experimental data obtained from reconstituted bacteriorhodopsin membranes. The following topics are considered: Halobacterium halobium; light-induced charge separation; equivalent circuit analysis; the concept of intelligent materials; reverse engineering of visual rhodopsin and bacteriorhodopsin; bacteriorhodopsin as an advanced bioelectronic material; the role of protein engineering; the interface problem.<>