Photoelectric properties of a detector based on dried bacteriorhodopsin film

The photoelectric response of a detector using dried bacteriorhodopsin (bR) film as the light sensing material is mathematically modeled and experimentally verified in this paper. The photocycle and proton transfer kinetics of dried bR film differ dramatically from the more commonly studied aqueous bR material because of the dehydration process. The photoelectric response of the dried film is generated by charge displacement and recombination instead of transferring a proton from the cytoplasmic side to the extracellular side of the cell membrane. In this work, the wild-type bR samples are electrophoretically deposited onto an indium tin oxide (ITO) electrode to construct a simple multiple layered photo-detector with high sensitivity to small changes in incident illumination. The light absorption characteristics of the thin bR film are mathematically represented using the kinetics of the bR photocycle and the charge displacement theorem. An electrically equivalent RC circuit is used to describe the intrinsic photoelectric properties of the film and external measurement circuitry to analyze the detector's response characteristics. Simulated studies and experimental results show that the resistance of the dried bR film is in the order of 10(11) Omega. When the input impedance of the measurement circuitry is one order of magnitude smaller than the dried film, the detector exhibits a strong differential response to the original time-varying light signal. An analytical solution of the equivalent circuit also reveals that the resistance and capacitance values exhibited by the dried bR film, in the absence of incident light, are almost twice as large as the values obtained while the material is under direct illumination. Experimental observations and a predictive model both support the notion that dried bR film can be used in simple highly sensitive photo-detector designs.