The Wired (3/28, Brown) "Wired Science" blog reports "MIT professor Daniel Nocera claims to have created an artificial leaf made from stable and inexpensive materials that mimics nature's photosynthesis process." The artificial leaf is "no bigger than a typical playing card, which is left floating in a pool of water" and "uses sunlight to split the water into its two core components, oxygen and hydrogen, which are stored in a fuel cell." Wired notes, "Nocera's leaf is stable - operating continuously for at least 45 hours without a drop in activity in preliminary tests - and made of widely available, inexpensive materials." It is also substantially more efficient than a natural leaf at harvesting energy from the sun.
Popular Science (3/28, Dillow) notes, "The Nocera Lab's artificial leaf, it should be noted, isn't the first working attempt at recreating photosynthesis in artificial materials." However, "previous attempts have led to artificial leaves full of unstable materials that are expensive and lead to short life spans."
