A new study, led by academics at St John’s College, University of Cambridge, has used semi-artificial photosynthesis to explore new ways to produce and store solar energy. They used natural sunlight to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen using a mixture of biological components and manmade technologies. Their method also managed to absorb more solar light than natural photosynthesis. A new paper, published in Nature Energy , outlines how the researchers at the Reisner Laboratory in Cambridge developed their platform to achieve unassisted solar-driven water-splitting. Natural photosynthesis stores sunlight in chemical energy carriers, but it has not evolved for the efficient synthesis of fuels, such as H 2 . Semi-artificial photosynthesis combines the strengths of natural photosynthesis with synthetic chemistry and materials science to develop model systems that overcome nature’s limitations, such as low-yielding metabolic pathways and non-complementary light absorption by photosystems I and II. Here, we report a […]