Carbon capture and biocatalytic oxygen production of photosystem II from thylakoids and microalgae on nanobiomaterials

[Display omitted] •Enhanced carbon capture was tested for microalgae assembled on gold dimers.•Thylakoids and spirulina were conjugated on vertical (V) and horizonal (H) dimers.•Plasmon resonance energy transfer was found to increase from V to H dimers.•An increase in oxygen production was observed for PSII on H dimers. Enhanced carbon capture and oxygen production via water splitting was observed by controlling the plasmon-induced resonance energy transfer (PIRET) for photosystem II (PSII) in thylakoid extracts and spirulina assembled on gold nanoparticle (AuNP) dimer arrays. The two types of vertical (V) and horizontal (H) AuNP dimer arrays were uniformly inserted inside pore diameter-controlled templates. Based on the theoretical calculations, the longitudinal mode of the H AuNP dimer array was found to be sensitive to the nanogap distances between the two AuNPs in resonance with the absorption at P680 of the PSII. The longitudinal modes that interacted with P680 of PSII increased from the V to the H conformer. The optical properties from the H AuNP dimer array caused overlapping absorbance and photoluminescence with PSII, and the H AuNP dimer arrays exhibited a significant increase in carbon capture and oxygen generation rates in comparison with those of the bare PSII protein complex under light irradiation via the controlled PIRET process.