Cambridge team’s artificial leaf creates fuels direct from Sun

Scientists around the world are aiming to create synthetic fuels in a variety of ways, hoping to mitigate the climate damage being caused by our reliance on fossil fuels. Much of the research attempts to mimic photosynthesis, the sun-powered process from which plants get their energy using CO2 and water.

Led by Professor Erwin Reisner, the Cambridge team has been exploring the use of ‘artificial leaves’ to recreate the photosynthetic process, using solar power to create multicarbon fuels. Until now, however, this technique has always relied on the intermediary step of creating syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide that can then be further processed to produce fuels, pharmaceuticals, plastics and fertilisers. In research published in Nature Energy, Resiner’s team describes how it used a copper and palladium-based catalyst that allowed its artificial leaf to produce more complex chemicals, specifically ethanol and n-propanol, without first having to produce syngas.