THE sun provides enough energy in an hour to meet the world’s demands for a year, yet solar energy accounts for barely 1% of global power consumption. Plenty of researchers are working on making solar cells turn sunlight into electricity more efficiently. Some, though, are trying instead to turn it into fuel, using so-called photoelectrochemical (PEC) cells. Unfortunately, most processes designed to do this have proved complex and inefficient. But Florent Boudoire and Artur Braun of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology think they have found a way to improve things.
