LOS ANGELES: Scientists have taken a big step towards creating artificial ‘plants’ that can use only sunlight to make gasoline and natural gas to run future cars without polluting

the environment.

A research team has created an artificial leaf that produces methane, the primary component of natural gas, using a combination of semiconducting nanowires and bacteria.

The research builds on a similar hybrid system that yielded butanol, a component in gasoline, and a variety of biochemical building blocks. It is a major advance towards synthetic photosynthesis, a type of solar power based on the ability of plants to transform sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into sugars.

Instead of sugars, synthetic photosynthesis seeks to produce liquid fuels that can be stored for years and distributed through existing infrastructure.

Peidong Yang, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley said his hybrid inorganic/biological systems give researchers new tools to study photosynthesis — and learn

its secrets.

“We’re good at generating electrons from light efficiently, but chemical synthesis always limited our systems in the past,” said Yang, also a co-director of the Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute.

“One purpose of this experiment was to show we could integrate bacterial catalysts with semiconductor technology. This lets us understand and optimise a synthetic photosynthesis system,” said Yang. “Burning fossil fuels is putting carbon dioxide into atmosphere faster than natural photosynthesis can take it out. A system that pulls carbon we burn out of air and converts it into carbon neutral fuel,” said Thomas Moore, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Arizona State University. Researchers hope to create a robust and efficient synthetic system.

They need model systems to study nature’s best designs — catalysts that convert water and carbon dioxide into sugars at room temperatures.

Ted Sargent, vice-dean of research for the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at University of Toronto said, “It is about learning nature’s guidelines, its rules on how to make a compellingly efficient and selective catalyst, and then using these insights to create better-engineered solutions,” said Sargent.

The study was published in the journal PNAS.