Artificial leaf' converts sunlight into fuel

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Artificial leaf' converts sunlight into fuel

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US scientists have developed an artificial leaf that converts sunlight into a chemical fuel.

30 September,2011 06:45 pm

When placed in a container of water, the silicon solar cell with catalytic materials on each side generates oxygen bubbles on one side and hydrogen bubbles on the other, which can be separated and collected. The gases could then be fed into a fuel cell that recombines them into water while producing an electric current, according to lead researcher Daniel Nocera.The device is the subject of a paper in the journal Science co-authored by six researchers from Sun Catalytix, a solar-energy firm founded by Nocera. Nocera says the leaf is made entirely of abundant, inexpensive materials. The sheet of semiconducting silicon is coated on one side with a cobalt-based catalyst, which releases the oxygen, and on the other with a nickel-molybdenum-zinc alloy, which separates the hydrogen.The device will not be ready for commercial production, however, until systems are developed that can collect, store and use the gases, he said.