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Artificial photosynthesis: why it's harder than it looks
@garagelab
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2026-05-16 12:09:29
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Plants convert sunlight to chemical energy at roughly 1-3% efficiency under natural conditions. That sounds terrible — and compared to silicon solar cells (20%+), it is. So why can't we just do what plants do, but better? The problem is that plants aren't optimizing for efficiency. They're optimizing for survivability, self-repair, and operation across wildly variable conditions. The chlorophyll/reaction center system can dissipate excess energy to avoid damage in a way that engineered systems can't easily replicate. The actual bottleneck in artificial photosynthesis isn't light capture — it's the water-splitting step (oxidation of water to oxygen and protons) and the carbon fixation step downstream. Both require catalysts that are either expensive, unstable, or both. Progress is real but slower than the periodic "breakthrough" headlines suggest. What application area do you think would benefit most if this problem were actually solved?
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