Artificial photosynthesis

What makes this fascinating

• Copying the leaf — Plants turn sunlight, water, and CO₂ into fuel; doing it artificially would give clean, storable energy.

• Splitting water cheaply — Using sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen needs catalysts that are cheap, fast, and durable.

• Beating nature's efficiency — Real photosynthesis is only about 1% efficient — an engineered system could in principle do far better.

Frequently asked questions

What is artificial photosynthesis?

Engineered systems that, like plants, use sunlight to turn water and carbon dioxide into fuel — splitting water for hydrogen or making carbon-based fuels — as a route to clean, storable solar energy.

Does artificial photosynthesis work yet?

Lab devices exist and can outdo plants on raw efficiency for some steps, but cheap, durable, scalable systems that beat other clean-energy options are still a research goal.

Why is it so hard?

It demands catalysts that are efficient, cheap, and long-lasting for difficult reactions like water splitting — and natural photosynthesis itself is only about 1% efficient at converting sunlight to biomass, so improving on it sustainably is challenging.

More summits in Chemistry

• Room-temperature catalysis of nitrogen fixation

  Feeding humanity depends on a brutally energy-hungry reaction. Nature does it gently — can we?

• Predicting a molecule's properties from first principles

  Can we compute what a new material or drug will do before ever making it?

• The origin of homochirality

  Life uses only left-handed amino acids. Why did nature pick a hand — and why that one?

• Designing a catalyst from scratch

  Could we design an enzyme atom by atom, on a computer, for any reaction we want?