Red light goes green: Metal-free organic sensitizers portend significant advance in artificial photosynthesis
Wednesday, February 18, 2015 - 09:30
in Physics & Chemistry
(Phys.org)—Photosynthesis – the ubiquitous yet remarkable process by which most plants, algae, and cyanobacteria convert light energy into chemical energy – provides the atmospheric oxygen and organic compounds fundamental to the evolution of life on Earth, and in so doing captures some six times more energy than humans consume while annually converting roughly 100 billion tons of carbon into biomass. In the effort to find alternatives to fossil fuels, the field of artificial photosynthesis – a chemical process that replicates natural photosynthesis – seeks to capture and store energy from visible light, including sunlight, in the chemical bonds of what is known as a solar fuel (for example, hydrogen, methane or methanol).