Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have found a new way to produce solar fuels by developing completely synthetic bionano machinery to harvest light without the need for a living cell.
The researchers' technique, reported in ACS Nano as a "synthetic purple membrane," is an important step toward producing clean fuels that can help solve global energy challenges.
These synthetic purple membranes contain tiny discs of organic compounds called lipids, human-made proteins and semiconducting nanoparticles that, when taken together, can transform sunlight into hydrogen fuel.
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