Nature boasts some nifty technology. A leaf is one such miraculous machine, able to turn one form of energy into another: it takes in carbon dioxide, plus water, and uses sunlight to convert it all into carbohydrates.
For years, scientists have tried to emulate the process of photosynthesis. Finally, those efforts are blooming. The magazine Scientific American, together with experts from the World Economic Forum, has named the artificial leaf one of the breakthrough technologies of 2017.
Laboratory-based efforts are attempting to go one better on nature by generating not plant food but fuels that can be stored for later use. Such projects offer the promise of making new forms of energy while mopping up carbon dioxide, an unwanted greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere. That makes artificial photosynthesis one of the potentially cleanest technologies on the energy horizon.