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Silk Leaf

Inspired by natural mechanisms, Julian Melchiorri conducted experimentation in order to explore the potential for making materials that photosynthesize and their possible applications.

In a period where global carbon emission and urbanization are growing exponentially the need for creating sustainable solutions for the indoor and outdoor urban environment arise.

Following Julian Melchiorri’s interest into natural phenomena and the recent scientific discoveries in Biology and Material science enabled him to explore the potential for creating photosynthetic materials aiming to bring the efficiency of nature into the man-made environment.

Silk Leaf is the first outcome of this exploration path. It is a modular device that photosynthesize made of a biological material mostly composed by Silk protein and chloroplasts. Silk Leaf absorbs CO2 and produces oxygen and organic compounds thanks to the photosynthetic ability of the stabilized chloroplasts inside silk protein. Any visible light and water is needed to enable the reaction.

Having the necessity to provide water to the chloroplasts to enable the photosynthesis, another embedded technology to deliver water to the chloroplasts has been introduced. The water will also remove chemical residues and sugars through osmosis, introducing the idea to collect it for energy generation.

The level of oxygen generation could be higher than a common leaf depending on many factors, from the material composition to the quantity and efficiency of chloroplasts into silk. Recent scientific publications shows nanobionic interventions on chloroplasts increasing their photosynthetic efficiency by 49%. This and other research on genetic modification will allow a dramatic improvement of their efficiency.