Artificial leaf uses sunlight to create medicine

The artificial leaf is like a tiny solar power plant, focusing light on molecules to trigger chemical reactions that create drugs.

The artificial leaf uses sunlight energy to trigger a chemical reaction that creates medicine. Photo: Seeker.

Leafy plants are miracle factories that convert sunlight into chemical energy through photosynthesis. Ever since Giacomo Ciamician published his first photochemical experiment in 1886, scientists have been searching for ways to recreate photosynthesis, according to Seeker.

A team at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands combined a luminescent solar concentrator (LSC) with tiny tubes running through it to create a leaf-shaped power plant. The LSC material will focus the energy of sunlight on chemicals flowing through the tubes to trigger the necessary chemical reactions. The device will convert the chemical at the input into another chemical at the output. This could be a drug or fuel. The research results were published in the journal Angewandte Chemie on December 21.

"The mini power plant mimics the processes that occur inside a leaf. The team shaped the power plant to look like a red maple leaf, although the shape of the device does not affect its function," said Timothy Noël, lead researcher.

This breakthrough promises to create small, on-demand chemical factories anywhere in the world. We could put the right chemicals into leaves, using the energy of sunlight to create the desired drug compound.

“Even when we did the experiment on a cloudy day, the amount of chemical collected was still 40% higher than the same experiment without the LSC material,” Noel said.

According to VNE