An optoelectronic device based on bacteriorhodopsin with modulated photocurrent waveform

Developing novel photoelectric devices by functional biophotoelectric materials, especially environmentally friendly and biocompatible natural biomaterials are of great significance in the emerging field of bioelectronics. Bacteriorhodopsin (bR) has attracted much attention because of its good stability and light response since it was found. The response signal of photoelectric devices employing proton pump function of bR often exists in dif-ferential form, however, the typical electronic unit prefer to obtain square-wave signals with controllable duty cycles, which is the basis of the logic circuit structure. In this paper, we report an optoelectronic device based on bR molecule with modulated photocurrent waveform, which is achieved to use external bias to increase the duration of photocurrent, so as to form photocurrent similar to square wave signal. This improvement will contribute to the application of such biological devices as logic units in the field of digital circuits and optical communication, and provide a new idea for the development of new optoelectronic molecular devices.