The sun produces more than enough energy for human activities, but we still can't capture enough of it. While solar panels (太阳能电池板) have made big advances in recent years, becoming cheaper and more efficient, they just provide electricity, not storable liquid fuels, which are still in great demand.
"If you look at the global energy structure and what's needed, electricity only covers maybe 20-25%. So the question is when we have covered that 25%, what do we do next? asks Professor Reisner from Cambridge University.
His answer is to look to nature: "Plants are a huge inspiration, because they have learned over millions of years how to take up sunlight and store the energy in energy carriers. I really believe that artificial photosynthesis (光合作用) will be one part of that energy structure over the next two decades. "
When plants photosynthesize, they take up water and carbon dioxide, and use light from the sun to change these raw materials into the carbohydrates they need for growth. "We want to copy this, but we don't really want to make carbohydrates because they make a low-quality fuel, so instead of making carbohydrates we try to make something that can be more readily used," says Prof Reisner.
"We have a great theory effort, and the theory and the experiment go hand in hand," says the project leader, Prof Harry Atwater of Caltech. "We now have what's actually the worlds largest database. The bad news is that we're not likely to see fields full of photosynthesis panels any time soon. There are still major stumbling blocks. "