Scientists claim first practical “artificial leaf”

WORLD SCIENCE

Sci­en­tists have claimed a mile­stone in the drive for sus­tain­a­ble en­er­gy: de­vel­op­ment of the first prac­ti­cal ar­ti­fi­cial leaf.

Speak­ing at the an­nu­al of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal So­ci­e­ty in An­a­heim, Calif., on March 27, re­search­ers de­scribed an ad­vanced so­lar cell the size of a play­ing card that mim­ics the pro­cess, called pho­to­syn­the­sis, that green plants use to con­vert sun­light and wa­ter in­to en­er­gy.

“A prac­ti­cal ar­ti­fi­cial leaf has been one of the Holy Grails of sci­ence for dec­ades,” said chem­ist Dan­iel No­cera, who led the proj­ect. “We be­lieve we have done it. The ar­ti­fi­cial leaf shows par­tic­u­lar prom­ise as an in­ex­pen­sive source of elec­tri­city for homes of the poor in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries. Our goal is to make each home its own pow­er sta­t­ion,” he said. “One can en­vi­sion vil­lages in In­dia and Af­ri­ca not long from now pur­chas­ing an af­ford­a­ble bas­ic pow­er sys­tem based on this tech­nol­o­gy.”

The de­vice is made from sil­i­con, elec­tron­ics and cat­a­lysts—sub­stances that ac­cel­er­ate or en­a­ble spe­cif­ic chem­i­cal re­ac­tions. Placed in a gal­lon of wa­ter in bright sun­light, the de­vice could pro­duce enough elec­tri­city to supply a house in a de­vel­op­ing coun­try with elec­tri­city for a day, No­cera said. It does so by split­ting wa­ter in­to its two com­po­nents, hy­dro­gen and ox­y­gen. The hy­dro­gen and ox­y­gen gas­es would be stored in a fu­el cell, which uses those two ma­te­ri­als to pro­duce elec­tri­city.

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