An artificial solar leaf could help convert water into hydrogen and oxygen.
Hydrogen is an "indispensible reagent" for the production of light biofuel from heavy petroleum feed stocks, an Arizona State University College of Liberal Arts and Sciences news release reported.
"Initially, our artificial leaf did not work very well, and our diagnostic studies on why indicated that a step where a fast chemical reaction had to interact with a slow chemical reaction was not efficient," ASU chemistry professor Thomas Moore said in the news release. "The fast one is the step where light energy is converted to chemical energy, and the slow one is the step where the chemical energy is used to convert water into its elements viz. hydrogen and oxygen."
The researchers looked into how photosynthesis oxidizes water (creating oxygen).
"We looked in detail and found that nature had used an intermediate step," Moore said. "This intermediate step involved a relay for electrons in which one half of the relay interacted with the fast step in an optimal way to satisfy it, and the other half of the relay then had time to do the slow step of water oxidation in an efficient way."
The team tweaked their system to be more like the natural one, and the efforts proved to be successful. They then used X-ray crystallography and optical and magnetic resonance spectroscopy techniques to look at the electromagnetic environment of the electrons and protons in the relay.
The researchers identified a "unique structural feature," which was a surprisingly short bond between a hydrogen atom and a nitrogen atom.
"They also found subtle magnetic features of the electronic structure of the artificial relay that mirrored those found in the natural system," the news release reported.
These findings will help researchers create an effective artificial leaf that will work to meet the world's growing energy demands by harnessing solar energy.
