Minireview on microbe-nanomaterial synergies: Fundamental, interface mechanism, characterization and CO2 photo-fixation

Solar driven bio-hybrids are promising composites formed by the integration of microbes and photocatalysts that opens up tremendous opportunities for sustainable CO 2 conversion related applications. These microbes-photocatalyst hybrids (MPH) show exceptional solar-to-chemical conversion efficiency with high selectivity and are proposed to address the associated limitation of natural and artificial photosynthesis. MPH includes the advantageous features of both microbe and inorganic units that makes it a promising candidate in this area of research. This review presents brief ideas on challenges of natural photosynthesis, and an introduction to artificial photocatalysis highlighting reported literatures. Further, we discuss various state of art MPH systems reported towards CO 2 conversionalong with the detailed interfacial charge transfer mechanism between micro-organism and photocatalyst. The review also elaborates different developed, efficiency and selectivity improvement strategies with suitable examples. Finally, the current challenges and future prospects in this direction are discussed well. Microbes-inorganic bio-hybrid systems very promising artificial photosynthesis composite depicting enhanced CO 2 fixation efficiency with high selectivity. • Bio-hybrids shows exceptional CO 2 photoconversion, high efficiency and selectivity. • State of art hybrid systems are discussed in details along with important findings. • The review elucidates interfacial charge transfer mechanisms of Bio-Hybrid. • Challenges and future prospects of bio-hybrids in CO 2 conversion discussed in brief.