Only God can make a tree, the poem says. But scientists are working on making artificial leaves that can produce fuels directly from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide, just as real leaves do. One day, the new leaves could help people heat their homes and drive their cars.
“If nature can do it, so can we,” said Gary Brudvig, a Yale chemistry professor who studies photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert and store energy from the sun. “We want to use the principles from nature to design an artificial leaf,” he said, adding that research groups around the world are working on the idea.
The artificial leaves won’t rustle soothingly in a summer breeze, or change from green to red and fall to the ground in autumn. Instead, they will probably be thin sheets of plastic embedded with light-absorbing materials, or sheets of bubble-wrap-like material spread out over a field that take in sunlight and water vapor and emit, for example, hydrogen or methanol.
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