The sun is a natural source of energy for much of the life on our planet, and while we have ways of turning that energy into usable electricity, we’ve haven’t even come close to exploiting the sun’s full potential. A team of researchers from UC Berkeley has developed a system that could be used to turn sunlight into organic compounds which in turn could be used to make affordable chemicals and drugs.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, say that by combining nanoscale materials with bacteria, they have opened the door to a new way of designing systems that could efficiently turn carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight into useful organic compounds—similar to what plants do through photosynthesis. Down the road, they say, the system could become a commercially viable way to produce high-value chemicals like drug precursors used by the pharmaceutical industry, or to store renewable energy in the form of liquid fuels. The goal of highly efficient artificial photosynthesis is a long-standing one, and there are many approaches to the problem, all of which face scientific hurdles (See “Sun + Water = Fuel” and “A Greener ‘Artificial Leaf’”). One general approach is to rely on microörganisms called electrotrophs, which can be coaxed, through the application of electricity, to make certain chemical building blocks.