‘Artificial leaf’ makes fuel from sunlight

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/artificial-leaf-0930.html

‘Artificial leaf’ makes fuel from sunlight

Solar cell bonded to recently developed catalyst can harness the sun, splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen.

David L. Chandler, MIT News Office

September 30, 2011

Researchers led by MIT professor Daniel Nocera have produced something they’re calling an “artificial leaf”: Like living leaves, the device can turn the energy of sunlight directly into a chemical fuel that can be stored and used later as an energy source.

The artificial leaf — a silicon solar cell with different catalytic materials bonded onto its two sides — needs no external wires or control circuits to operate. Simply placed in a container of water and exposed to sunlight, it quickly begins to generate streams of bubbles: oxygen bubbles from one side and hydrogen bubbles from the other. If placed in a container that has a barrier to separate the two sides, the two streams of bubbles can be collected and stored, and used later to deliver power: for example, by feeding them into a fuel cell that combines them once again into water while delivering an electric current.

The creation of the device is http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2011/09/28/science.1209816.full.pdf">described in a paper published Sept. 30 in the journal Science. Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy and professor of chemistry at MIT, is the senior author; the paper was co-authored by his former student Steven Reece PhD ’07 (who now works at Sun Catalytix, a company started by Nocera to commercialize his solar-energy inventions), along with five other researchers from Sun Catalytix and MIT.

The device, Nocera explains, is made entirely of earth-abundant, inexpensive materials — mostly silicon, cobalt and nickel — and works in ordinary water. Other attempts to produce devices that could use sunlight to split water have relied on corrosive solutions or on relatively rare and expensive materials such as platinum.

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[wtmusic]

1. Solar's best bet is making progress.

K&R.

[Stargazer99]

2. Reminds me of a cartoon I saw during the 50s

in a science magazine. Two scientist in white coats talking to each other and pointing to the sun with the comment "now all we have to do is figure out how to charge them for it". So much for our financal system bringing about progress, what a laugh

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. How so?

Nocera is an advocate of what he calls “Personalized Energy.”
http://poptech.org/popcasts/dan_nocera_personalized_energy