Fine-tuning photosynthesis
A new analysis by MIT researchers could make it possible to design more efficient artificial systems that mimic the way plants harvest the energy of sunlight through photosynthesis.The study is the latest in an ongoing series examining the process of photosynthesis and the different variables that determine its efficiency, conducted by Associate Professor of Chemistry Jianshu Cao and his postdocs and colleagues. The new work, which looks at artificial photosynthetic systems based on self-assembling molecules designed by researchers at of the University of California, Berkeley, follows a paper they published in October in the New Journal of Physics that examined the factors that determine the efficiency of natural photosynthesis. The hope, being pursued by various research teams around the world, is to be able to eventually produce synthetic chemical systems that mimic nature’s process of photosynthesis and thereby produce a more efficient way of harnessing the sun’s energy than today’s...