Artificial leaves can produce fertilizer

In the second half of the 20th century, the extensive use of chemical fertilizers was one of the reasons for the prosperity of agriculture.

The American Chemical Society (ACS) is the world’s largest scientific society, and this year’s annual meeting presented more than 14,000 broad scientific topics

"When you have large-scale basic equipment and centralized system processes, you can easily manufacture and provide fertilizers

He believes that emerging poor countries do not always have such good resource conditions

The first "Green Revolution" in the 1960s witnessed an increase in the amount of fertilizer applied to new varieties of rice and wheat, which led to a double increase in agricultural output

When the world’s population, especially the population of the poorest countries, continues to increase, providing food for everyone requires a multi-pronged approach.

To help in the next green revolution, Nocera is working hard to research his most well-known bionic artificial leaves to make fertilizer

In June last year, Nocera's team reported a nickel-molybdenum-zinc catalyst that transforms artificial leaves, which is toxic to microorganisms and friendly to cobalt and phosphorus bacteria

"Fuel is only the first step

For this application, the scientific research team designed a system where the yellow bacterium fixes hydrogen from artificial leaves and fixes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to make bioplastics that store bacteria like fuel

"After that, I put it in the soil because it already uses sunlight to make bioplastics

Nocera's laboratory analyzed the ammonia production of this system, and the real evidence lies in the radish