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News:
“Shining sunlight on the artificial leaves and getting liquid fuel from carbon dioxide and water is an amazing bit of chemistry,” said Dr. Motiar Rahaman, the paper’s first author. “Normally, when you try to convert CO2 into another chemical product using an artificial leaf device, you almost always get carbon monoxide or syngas, but here, we’ve been able to produce a practical liquid fuel just using the power of the sun. It’s an exciting advance that opens up whole new avenues in our work.”
At present, the device is a proof of concept and shows only modest efficiency. The researchers are working to optimize the light absorbers so that they can better absorb sunlight and optimizing the catalyst so it can convert more sunlight into fuel. Further work will also be required to make the device scalable so that it can produce large volumes of fuel.
“Even though there’s still work to be done, we’ve shown what these artificial leaves are capable of doing,” said Reisner. “It’s important to show that we can go beyond the simplest molecules and make things that are directly useful as we transition away from fossil fuels.”