Normal photosynthesis use carbon dioxide and water as raw materials and sunlight powers the entire process. But in one of many future scenarios we depend upon hydrogen to power our fuel cell equipped vehicles.

That's were Thomas Mallouk, a DuPont Professor of Materials Chemistry and Physics, and W. Justin Youngblood, postdoctoral fellow in chemistry, together with collaborators at Arizona State University get into the picture. They recently released their results of their solar cell that can split water into hydrogen and oxygen directly.

Previous attempts by other scientist to create such a device has resulted in devices that use more energy than they produce. But this time there is good news. Overall efficiency of the new device is 0.3% and compared to nature's efficiency rating of 1-3 % their result do look promising. Whether the efficiency rating can be improved enough for the device to be economically viable or not remains to be seen.

{sharethis}