MIT professor Daniel G. Nocera has long been jealous of plants. He desperately wanted to do what they do--split water into hydrogen and oxygen and use the products to do work. That, he figures, is the only way we humans can solve our energy problems; enough energy pours down from the sun in one hour to power the planet's energy needs for a year.
麻省理工学院的丹尼尔.G.纳舍埃（Daniel G. Nocera）教授长期以来都对植物充满了羡慕之情。他竭尽全力地设法以人工方式完成植物光合作用过程—把水分解成氢和氧，然后加以利用。他认为，这是我们人类可以解决能源问题的唯一方法—太阳在一小时中通过光线倾泻到地球的能量，可以满足我们这个星球整整一年的能源需求。

In January, only a month after reevaluating his methodology in the face of a frustratingly slow process, he finally found a way. "For six months now I've been looking at the leaves and saying 'I own you guys!'"
因为分解过程缓慢得令人沮丧，去年十二月，他重新评估了所使用的方法，这次评估刚刚过去一个月，他终于发现了一种方法。“六个月以来，我一直看着叶子说：‘我爱你，伙计们！’”

Nocera's discovery--a cheap and easy way to store energy that he thinks will be used to change solar power into a mainstream energy source--will be published in the journal Science on Friday. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited--and soon."
纳舍埃（Nocera）的发现将发表在星期五的《科学》杂志上，这是一种廉价且方便的储存能源的方法，他认为用这一方法可以把太阳能变成主要的能源来源。“这就是我们几年来一直谈论的极乐世界，”麻省理工学院能源亨利.德雷福斯教授奖（Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy）得主纳舍埃（Nocera）说。“一直以来，太阳能都是一种受限、遥不可及的解决方案。现在我们可以真正地把太阳能视为无限制的能源方案—不久就会变成现实。”

Plants catch light and turn it into an electric current, then use that energy to excite catalysts that split water into hydrogen and oxygen during what is called photosynthesis' light cycle. The energy is then used during the dark cycle to allow the plant to build sugars used for growth and energy storage.
植物捕获光线，转换成电流，然后利用这一这能量激活催化剂，然后把水分解成氢和氧，这一过程被称为光合作用的亮循环。然后植物在暗循环中利用这些材料合成用于生长和能量储备的糖。

Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, focused on the water-splitting part of photosynthesis. They found cheap and simple catalysts that did a remarkably good job. They dissolved cobalt and phosphate in water and then zapped it with electricity through an electrode. The cobalt and phosphate form a thin-film catalyst around the electrode that then use electrons from the electrode to split the oxygen from water. The oxygen bubbles to the surface, leaving a proton behind.
纳舍埃（Nocera）和纳舍埃实验室的博士后研究员马特舒.凯纳恩（Matthew Kanan）把研究重点放在光合作用的水分解部分。他们找到了一些廉价、简单的催化剂，催化效果非常明显。他们把钴和磷酸盐溶解到水溶液中，然后，通过电极对它们进行电解。钴和磷酸盐在电极周围形成了薄膜型的催化剂，这些催化剂就利用电极发射的电子从水中分解氢和氧。氧气泡浮出水面，水中就留下了质子。

A few inches away, another catalyst, platinum, helps that bare proton become hydrogen. (This second reaction is a well-known one, and not part of Nocera and Kanan's study.)
几英寸外的另一催化剂铂帮助把裸露的质子合成氢气。（这第二个反应是大家都很熟悉的一种反应，不在纳舍埃（Nocera）和凯纳恩（Kanan）的研究之列。）

The hydrogen and oxygen, separated and on-hand, can be used to power a fuel cell whenever energy is needed.
把氢气和氧气分开存放，这样在需要能源时就可用它们来驱动燃料电池。

"Once you put a photovoltaic on it," he says, "you've got an inorganic leaf."
“只要再另外装上一套光伏电池，你就得到了一片无机的叶子。”他说到。

James Barber, a biochemistry professor at Imperial College London who studies artificial photosynthesis but was not involved in this research, called the discovery by Nocera and Kanan a "giant leap" toward generating clean, carbon-free energy on a massive scale.
伦敦帝国理工学院（Imperial College London）的生物化学家詹姆斯. 巴博（James Barber）教授一直在从事人工光合作用的研究，不过他没有介入该研究，他称纳舍埃（Nocera）和凯纳恩（Kanan）的发现，是大规模转向清洁、不产生二氧化碳的能源进程中的“巨大飞跃”。

"This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind," he said. "The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated."
“对人类未来的繁荣，这是一项有巨大意义的重要发现，”他说。“其重要性是不言而喻的。”

Nocera's discovery arose from frustration. Disappointed with the pace of his lab's progress, Nocera and his team decided in December to question some of the basic assumptions they had made in setting up earlier experiments.
纳舍埃（Nocera）的发现源于挫折。由于对实验室取得进展的进度不满意，纳舍埃（Nocera）和他的团队在去年十二月份决定对在初期实验中设定的某些基本假设进行重新审查。

Chemists, it turns out, are always worrying about the stability of their catalysts and end up doing backflips to try to synthesize materials that won't corrode. Photosynthesis, though, is so violently reactive that the catalysts involved break down every 30 minutes. The leaf has to constantly rebuild them. Maybe, thought Nocera, instead of fighting corrosion, he should work with it. "It's a bias a lot of scientists have. We want something to be structurally stable. But all it has to be is functionally stable."
一般来说，化学家总是担心催化剂的稳定性，总是用尽各种办法试图合成耐腐蚀的材料。不过，光合作用的活性非常强烈，催化剂每使用三十分钟就会被分解。叶子不得不不断地重新生成它们。也许，纳舍埃（Nocera）思索，我们应该做的不是抗拒腐蚀，而是利用这一现象。“这是许多科学家都有的一种倾向。我们希望某种物质结构稳定。但事实上，我们需要的是功能稳定。”

This thinking led Nocera to try his cobalt-phosphate mixture. He knew it wouldn't hold together, but he thought it might still work. Sure enough, Nocera's catalyst breaks down whenever the electricity is cut, but it assembles itself again when electricity is reapplied.
这一思路引导纳舍埃（Nocera）尝试了钴—磷酸盐混合物。他知道它不会合成新物质，可他想也许会起作用。果然，只要一断电，纳舍埃（Nocera）的催化剂就发生分解，可一加电，催化剂又重新聚合到了一起。

Nocera's discovery is still a science experiment. It needs plenty of engineering before it can be a useful device. The cobalt and phosphate at the center of Nocera's work is cheap and plentiful, but the hydrogen reaction uses platinum, which is rare and expensive. The electrode needs to be improved so the oxygen-making process can speed up. And the system needs to be integrated into some kind of electricity-producing device, ideally powered by solar or wind on one end and a fuel cell on the other.
纳舍埃（Nocera）的发现仍然只是个科学实验。在要成为一个实用装置，还需要大量的工程设计。作为纳舍埃（Nocera）研究中心的钴和磷酸盐，廉价且储量丰富，但是，生成氢气的反应使用了稀有且昂贵的铂。还需要对电极进行改进，以加速制氧过程。同时，这一系统需要整合到某种类型发电装备之中，理想的情况是这种设备既可用太阳能或风能发电，也可用燃料电池供电。从水中分解氧是这套系统中实现困难的部份，但纳舍埃（Nocera）已经成功实现了这一过程。“现在我们可以开始考虑全天供电的太阳能（光伏）系统了。”他表示。“如果太阳能发电系统不能七天二十四小时输送电力，就不可能有太阳能经济。现在我们能做到了。”

But splitting the oxygen away from the water was the hard part, and Nocera has done it. "Now we can start thinking about a totally distributed solar [photovoltaic] system," he said. "We couldn't have a solar economy unless it could produce energy 24/7. Now we can."
但是将氧气从水中分离是最困难的一部分,纳舍埃（Nocera）做到了。“我们现在可以开始设计具有完整分配系统的太阳能（光生伏打）系统”他说。“只有可以连续不间断的产生能量，才可以称得上太阳能经济时代。现在我们做到了。”

His hope is that because unlike traditional electrolysis devices, which are expensive and require toxic alkaline solutions, his system is so cheap, simple and benign that scientists and engineers around the world will be able to improve it quickly.
与昂贵且需要有毒的碱性溶液的传统电解装置不同，他的系统成本低、简单、不产生毒副作用，因此，他的希望是全世界的科学家和工程师能够迅速地对它进行改进。

For his part, Nocera says he will work to understand and improve both sides of his new discovery. His lab will try to learn every detail about just how his catalyst is making the oxygen. And he is going to work with his engineering colleagues at MIT to try to integrate his storage device into systems that he hopes one day will power homes and cars all day and all night.
纳舍埃（Nocera）说，他的工作是设法了解并从两方面改进他的新发现。他的实验室将试图搞清楚这种催化剂到底是如何制出氧气的每个细节。他将与麻省理工学院的工程设计同事共同努力，把他的储能装置整合到各种系统之中，他希望有一天这样的发电装置能为家庭和汽车不分昼夜地提供电力。