Challenges for solar fuel devices brought into sharp focus after downpour degrades artificial tree

2022 was Italy’s driest year on record. But when a team from the University of Cambridge in the UK travelled there that July to enter their artificial tree in a competition, they were thwarted by a storm dumping a quarter of the average annual rainfall in a single day. ‘We all went to Italy together, we all looked after the device, we all saw the storm coming and we all saw our device dissolving,’ remembers Erwin Reisner, who co-led the team with Samuel Stranks.