Multimedia Gallery
Overcoming Limitations in Photosynthesis
In photosynthesis, solar energy is captured and used to produce chemical fuel by a photosynthetic organism. The research in this National Science Foundation-supported project is designed to improve the efficiency of this capture and conversion by: 1) separating them into two types of cells, one that captures solar energy and another "factory" cell that produces fuel; and 2) enabling these two different types of cells to communicate with one another via the flow of electrical currents between them. Compartmentalizing the processes of energy capture and fuel production into two different types of cells will allow researchers to optimize environments for each process, and thereby improve the efficiency of each process.
To learn more, see NSF press release "NSF Announces New Awards That Will Investigate More Efficient Ways to Harvest Sunlight to Make New Biofuels and Biomaterials."
Credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation
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