JCAP Research on Solar Fuel Production at Light Sources

Nature's photosynthetic reaction provides inspiration for how to create an artificial photosynthetic device that converts solar photons into chemical energy. Creating such a device using solar energy, which is by far the most abundant and inherently clean energy source, is crucial for supporting our energy demand with minimal environmental impact [1 N. S. Lewis and D. G. Nocera, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 103, 15729–15735 (2006).[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]]. The Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) was established in 2010 as the Fuels from Sunlight DOE Energy Innovation Hub by a team from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and its lead partner, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). The mission of JCAP is to demonstrate a scalable and manufacturable solar-fuels generator, using Earth-abundant elements, which robustly produces fuel from the sun 10 times more efficiently than current crops (Figure 1) [2 M. R. Shaner, Energy Env. Sci. 7, 779–790 (2014).[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]]. The scientific challenges to reach this goal include: (1) the discovery of new catalysts for fuel production; (2) new materials and architectures for effective capture and conversion of sunlight; (3) linking and integration of the components into a functioning system; (4) development of the science base for taking nanoscale functional units and assembling them into macroscopic functional devices; and (5) overcoming implementation hurdles inherent in taking solar fuels from a laboratory proof-of-concept to a potentially manufacturable system.