Credit: Zosia Rostomian/Berkeley Lab
Visualization of a bacterial cell (top) converting the chemical energy of organic molecules to electrons that are transferred to an inorganic tin oxide catalyst (bottom) via molecular wires embedded in an ultrathin silica layer (middle). The proton conducting silica membrane separates the chemically incompatible biological and inorganic environments thereby enabling electronic coupling of the catalysts on the shortest possible length scale, which is key to biohybrid performance and scalability.