When it comes to the conversion of solar radiation into usable energy, nature is still the leading technology pioneer. It is unmatched in terms of its efficient harvesting of the sun’s radiation to date. With photosynthesis, radiation energy is converted into chemical energy – a system that plants have perfected over some 450 million years. It has been a great challenge to plants not to overheat, and to eliminate all destructive influences of radiation. Today, plants have no energy problems. Molecules in the chloroplasts of plants that capture the light constantly break down and then regenerate again. This increases the efficiency of the conversion of radiation into usable energy. Humankind has always envied this perfected system belonging to plants.

Photovoltaics, the primary human technology that generates electricity from light, is an integral part of energy production in many countries around the world – but there is still room for improvement. Silicon solar cells are the standard tool in our harvest of solar radiation, but they only convert about 20 percent of received light into energy. And there's a further problem: solar cells have a lifespan of about ten years. After 20 years of operation, these cells usually have an output of only about 80 per cent of their initial output.

But in addition to solar cell technology, we have developed other approaches to take advantage of the sun’s energy. These are based on nature. In 2010, researchers led by Michael Strano from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge published an experiment in the journal Nature Chemistry in which they produced molecules that stored sunlight and then regenerated themselves. These synthetic, disk-shaped molecules converted sunlight into electricity, and upon application of a special liquid, regenerated again and again. When excited by light, the molecules gave off electrons. The end result is a system that works twice as effectively as normal solar cells, but scientists still need to increase the concentration of molecules in order to increase total power production.