The British created the world’s first artificial leaf

Perhaps in the near future “problem” areas of the Earth. In particular, major cities and industrial centers can get a “synthetic” plants. Development of artificial photosynthesis being a long time, but recently, Toshiba announced that have made significant progress in this area.

At the same time, a British graduate student Julian Melkiorri, based at the London Royal College of Art went the other way and created in cooperation with Tufts University, located in Massachusetts, the first “synthetic” tree leaf.

Sheet Melkiorri not completely “unnatural” – it uses along with plastic and silk. In silk concluded extracted from conventional plant chloroplasts. Synthetic design should renew the life of chloroplasts, as well as prevent them from clotting. As a result, the artificial sheet should not only perform all the functions of a conventional leaf plants, but last long enough.

Unfortunately, there is a list of experimental design. Its creators are busy at the time of the test, but because of the characteristics of the invention is reported quite a bit. Not known yet no term of “life” artificial plants, nor how much carbon dioxide it is able to process.

The creators of the sheet lay on the development of its high expectations. Scope of synthetic plant is more than obvious. Scientists hope that such material will be covering the walls of buildings, which will help make the air cleaner in the cities.