Thursday, March 31, 2011
Artificial Leaf Turns Sunlight Into a Cheap Energy Source
"Nearly all the energy we use on this planet starts out as sunlight that plants use to knit chemical bonds. Now, for the first time, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created a potentially cheap, practical artificial leaf that does much the same thing. The new device is a silicon wafer about the shape and size of a playing card. Different catalysts coat each side of the wafer. The silicon absorbs sunlight and passes that energy to the catalysts to split water into molecules of hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2). Hydrogen is a fuel that can be either burned or used in a fuel cell to create electricity, reforming water in either case. This means that, in theory, anyone with access to water can use it to create a cheap, clean, and available source of fuel." Full news article @ Science
