Scientists have gotten a crucial step closer to producing a functioning artificial leaf that converts water into hydrogen and oxygen.

An important advance has been made by a team at BISfuel, a U.S. Department of Energy-funded Energy Frontier Research Center in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Arizona State University.

The researchers have reported that they are closer to imitating the natural photosynthetic process after figuring out an "intermediate step" necessary for the water to oxidize, according to The Engineer.

"Initially, our artificial leaf did not work very well, and our diagnostic studies on why indicated that a step where a fast chemical reaction had to interact with a slow chemical reaction was not efficient," ASU chemistry professor Thomas Moore said in a statement as quoted by The Engineer.

The researchers imitated that step, designing an artificial relay that brought the leaf closer to photosynthesis.  

"The fast one is the step where light energy is converted to chemical energy, and the slow one is the step where the chemical energy is used to convert water into its elements viz. hydrogen and oxygen," Moore explained.

Using x-ray technology, the team mapped out the electrons and protons that were part of the relay and found that an "unusually short bond" between a hydrogen atom and a nitrogen atom was crucial to the step.

The report came from ASU chemistry professors Thomas Moore, Devens Gust, Ana Moore and Vladimiro Mujica along with key collaborators Oleg Poluektov and Tijana Rajh from Argonne National Laboratory.

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