A major challenge in solar cell technology dwells in achieving an efficient absorption of photons with an effective carrier extraction. In all cases, light absorption considerations call for thicker modules while carrier transport would benefit from thinner ones. This dichotomy is a fundamental problem limiting the efficiencies of most photovoltaics. Light absorption in silicon cells, for example, is very weak, especially at the red side of the absorption band, requiring a thick active layer to capture enough photons. This active layer needs to be of high quality (and expensive!) crystalline material to transport the excitons over tens of microns. One pathway to overcome this problem is to decouple light absorption from carrier collection. We present solutions to this problem applying bio-inspired nanostructures to two different types of systems: organic photovoltaic (OPV) and dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC).