A recipe for solar energy: learning from nature
So while everybody’s talking about hydrogen, Nocera is now concerned with capturing oxygen—a far harder task. There are more electrons to worry about and getting the oxygen atoms to let go of the photocatalyst and move together neatly in pairs is tricky.
He and his colleagues are getting close with some help from biologists. “In the past two years, biologists have begun uncovering the secrets of how the so-called oxygen-evolving complex works in plants,” said Nocera. “So in our lab we started saying, ‘How can we get the essence of the chemical reactions happening in the plant—but in a beaker?’”
While practical devices won’t come soon, Nocera’s work has already yielded spin-offs in other directions. Among them are novel ideas for microscopic sensors that detect biological hazards and a new understanding of how critical enzymes inside the body work. To Nocera, energy is not a pure engineering problem but also a basic science problem that must be tackled from many angles. “There are big problems that lie at the heart of energy,” said Nocera. “And they’re so big that when you solve them, there are spin-offs everywhere for many other technologies.”
