A group of chemical engineers and biochemists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a new study presenting a way to improve the efficiency of plants light harvesting during the photosynthesis.


Embedding carbon nanotubes - microscopic tubes thinner than a human hair able to absorb sunlight and convert it to electron flow - inside the leaves, they were able to augment the amount of light energy captured by the plant.


"Plants have, for a long time, provided us with valuable products like food, biofuels, construction materials and the oxygen we breathe", explains plant biologist and chemical engineer Juan Pablo Giraldo. "We envisioned them as new hybrid biomaterials for solar energy harnessing, self-repairing materials and chemical detectors of pollutants, pesticides, and fungal and bacterial infections."

Rebuilding plants into bionic superpowered energy photosynthesizers.


Read more on: Scientific American

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