Engineers at Stanford University have discovered how to use the sun's energy to combine water and carbon dioxide to create chemical products, a process known as artificial photosynthesis, using underwater solar cells. Functioning under water, the solar cells spur chemical reactions to convert captured greenhouse gases into fuel rather than feeding electricity into the grid. Stanford materials scientist Paul McIntyre, a pioneer in the emerging field of artificial photosynthesis, led the work, which was published in Nature Materials. In plants, photosynthesis uses the sun's energy to combine water and carbon dioxide to create sugar, the fuel on which they live. Artificial photosynthesis would use the energy from specialized solar cells to combine water with captured carbon dioxide to produce industrial fuels, such as natural gas. Artificial photosynthesis has faced two challenges: ordinary silicon solar cells corrode under water and corrosion-proof solar cells have been unable to capture enough sunlight under water to drive the chemical reactions. In 2011, McIntyre's lab managed to make solar ...Den vollständigen Artikel lesen ...