Following The Path Of Solar Energy During Photosynthesis Imagine
a technology that would not only provide a green and renewable
source of electrical energy, but could also help scrub the
atmosphere of excessive carbon dioxide resulting from the
burning of fossil fuels. That’s the promise of artificial
versions of photosynthesis, the process by which green plants
have been converting solar energy into electrochemical energy
for millions of years. To get there, however, scientists need a
far better understanding of how nature does it, starting with
the harvesting of sunlight and the transporting of this energy
to electrochemical reaction centers. Graham Fleming, a physical
chemist who holds joint appointments with the U.S. Department of
Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
and the University of California (UC) at Berkeley, is the leader
of an ongoing effort to discover how plants are able to transfer
energy through a network of pigment-protein complexes with
nearly 100-percent efficienc