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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Nonradiative energy transfer is a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature. Photosynthesis begins with light harvesting, where pigment-protein complexes transform sunlight into excitations, usually called excitons, within the molecules. Excitons are formed by an excited electron and the positively charged hole that is left in the ground state. In photosynthesis, the energy of this exciton is finally transferred to the reaction center, where a charge separation process provides chemical energy for plants, algae, and bacteria. Human-made organic photovoltaic cells try to mimic this natural process, and it is the transport of the excitons after light absorption that determines the efficiency of the cell. In organic materials, energy transfer is governed by short-range dipole-dipole interactions through the process of Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET), whose spatial range is limited to distances less than 10 nm. Recent work by Zhong et al. (1) shows how this range can be extended to distances larger than 100 nm by taking advantage of a quantum electrodynamics (QED) phenomenon called strong coupling [sciencemag.org].

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