Energy harvesting and conversion should be accompanied by energy storage systems that can accommodate for the surge in demand at specific times of the day or year, while at the same time storing the energy surplus. Batteries are a convenient way to achieve this, yet are limited by material resources to fabricate them, therefore an alternative energy storage form is necessary. The reason fossil fuels have been reliable and are still popular is because of their high energy density and convenience. One can stop at a filling station, fill up their tank in a few minutes and are ready to go, whereas it will take a few hours to fully charge electric vehicles, despite advances in rapid charging systems. We can learn from nature. Capturing and converting atmospheric CO2 into energy-dense fuels by mimicking the concept of natural photosynthesis could potentially help to solve global warming and the energy crises simultaneously, yet progress is slow. Two main reasons hampering progress are scalability and the limited space for deployment.
Writing in Nature, Andrei et al. report scalable, floating photoelectrochemical artificial leaves that provide an option to lower the costs of solar fuel production by integrating light-harvesting material and catalysts within one device (Nature 608, 518–522; 2022). The lightweight artificial leaves are realized by combining thin, flexible substrates with carbonaceous protection layers made of parylene-C, replacing the bulky epoxy encapsulants commonly used. Lead halide perovskite and BiVO4 was used as the lightweight photoelectrodes, and Pt and Co catalysts were used for proton and CO2 reduction, respectively.
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