The futuristic solar panel

Someone told me about work developing from Harvard and others on new uses of leaves like improving current solar panels.

Upon further research, here are a few articles about this “artificial leaf” which we hope will help buildings and usher in new technology:

MORE POWER

This bio-inspired leaf generates more power than solar panels (interestingengineering.com)

• Studies have already found that PV-leaves can “generate over 10 percent more electricity compared to conventional solar panels, which lose up to 70 percent of the incoming solar energy to the environment.”

MORE CLEAN WATER

• These ‘solar leaves’ produce electricity and clean water (anthropocenemagazine.org)

• Because the transpiration layer is made from widely available, affordable, and environmentally-friendly materials, it should relatively easy to mass manufacture and to compete with established technologies, the researchers write.

MORE SUNLIGHT

• Harvard's Solar-Powered Leaf Captures More Sunlight Than a Real Plant (inverse.com)

• “Instead of having a gas station, the sun is hitting your house, you have an artificial leaf, you could be generating your own fuel,” says Daniel Nocera, professor of Energy at Harvard, in a video about the bionic leaf.

MORE FOOD

• Harvard’s bionic leaf could help feed the world — Harvard Gazette

• With eye on population growth, postdoc teams with Silver, Nocera on project to aid agriculture in developing world

MORE CHEMICALS, LIQUID FUELS, ETC.

• A 'bionic leaf' turns solar energy into chemicals and fuels (theconversation.com)

• Photosynthesis – turning the sun’s energy into food for plants – is the biological system that feeds the world. But despite its awesome power, the process is extremely inefficient. We can’t really blame plants for this because photosynthesis evolved for ancient earth’s conditions.

  What if we could improve on this fundamental, ancient process?

• We developed a biological process that makes chemicals or liquid fuels directly from solar cells. This proof of concept offers a new way to think about renewable energy.

• In addition to increased efficiency, this setup bridges the strengths of each technology. Solar panels are great at harvesting sunlight but storing energy is a challenge. Also, panels aren’t really designed to produce chemicals. Microbes, in contrast, can produce a wide range of high-value compounds but require constant “food” to grow - in this case, hydrogen, sunlight and CO2. By combining these technologies, solar energy produces the necessary molecules our Ralstonia require to grow and produce chemicals.

• Bionic leaf uses bacteria to convert solar energy into liquid fuel (harvard.edu)

  • Now scientists from a team spanning Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have created a system that uses bacteria to convert solar energy into a liquid fuel. Their work integrates an “artificial leaf,” which uses a catalyst to make sunlight split water into hydrogen and oxygen, with a bacterium engineered to convert carbon dioxide plus hydrogen into the liquid fuel isopropanol.

  • Silver and Nocera began collaborating two years ago, shortly after Nocera came to Harvard from MIT. They shared an interest in “personalized energy,” or the concept of making energy locally, as opposed to the current system, which in the example of oil means production is centralized and then sent to gas stations. Local energy would be attractive in the developing world.